Twenty One Bottles of Beer on the Wall
by poestheblackcat
Summary: Another birthday challenge for myself: 21 stories, all about Supernatural and alcohol, updated daily until the big day. Now up: "Designated Driver" - Ben's not a teetotaler or a Lemonade Lucy. He just doesn't drink. Future tag to "Swan Song." Outside POV.
1. Chapter 21 Bobby Babysits

**Twenty-one bottles of beer on the wall**

AN: Last year, for my twentieth birthday, I wrote twenty one-shots in celebration (and as a challenge) about questions that Sam has asked Dean over the years, starting with baby!Sam and wee!Dean to about the end of Season 5. You can check it out if you like: "Twenty Questions." I posted one story a day until the big day.

This year, for my twenty-first, I want to do twenty-one stories about people getting drunk. Or more specifically, characters and situations associated with _Supernatural_ and alcohol. Most of the stories in this birthday anthology are going to be either really angsty or really silly. This first one is mostly silly.

So let's start this all off with a par-tay! The almost-script-style writing in this one isn't like my usual stuff, but it's meant to be funny. I'll experiment with different styles and themes along the way, to mix things up and keep it all interesting.

Here we go…twenty-one days before B-Day. I'll update daily.

Summary: What the title says: The Winchesters and their angel buddy get drunk at Bobby's.

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**Bobby Babysits Two Guys and an Angel (in a State of Completely Shitfaced and Drunken Inebriation)**

"Dude. I'm so drunk." _Manly_ g_iggle._

_Equally masculine titter. _"You said that already, man. You're toasted." _Pause._ "I think I am too." _Burp._

"I believe I am also in an inebriated state as well." _Slow blink, followed by a characteristic head tilt. _"I find it…fascinating. The light from the lamp is quite mesmerizing."

_Loud snort and a hearty slap on the back._ "Welcome to being human, Cas. Getting so shit-faced you can't tell which way's up or down is one of the joys a' life, my fine feathery friend." _Liquid sloshes in the bottle._ "Makes everything look better when your whole world's already upside down an' sideways."

_A line creases the center of the furrowed angelic brow. _"By that logic, alcohol will return an upended world to its correct placement. That argument is fallible, as the Earth is a round object in a vacuum, and as such, cannot be turned downside top." _Hiccup. _"Upside down."

"Dude, you are so drunk." _Snorting chuckles._ "You're a philosophizing drunk, is what you are." _A finger pokes hard at the loosened tie worn over a rumpled white shirt._ "Sammy's a philofopee…philofa-…falafel too, ain'tcha, Sammy? Sammy? Sam? You…you passed out already, dude?" _Bright, lopsided grin._ "Hey Bobby! Sam's a lightweight! Cas! Cas? Dude, you too? Maaaan…'S 'ctually a good idea… "

_Scoff and a paternal headshake. _"Like I always said, none a' you dumb idjits can hold your liquor worth a damn. Keep tellin' you ta stay away from my stash!"

_Rustling of fabric as it settles over the three sleeping figures drunkenly dreaming of endless libraries (Sam), big-bosomed women (surprisingly, Cas' dream), and blueberry-walnut pie slathered with a mountain of whipped cream and served up on a naked girl (Dean)._

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AN: This one is actually the shortest story I've written for this anthology so far, so don't forget to come back tomorrow! I've got some Dean angst planned for ya!


	2. Chapter 20 Nurpled

**Twenty bottles of beer on the wall**

Summary: Dean philosophizes on his intelligence, women, and alcohol. Based off of the purple nurple scene in "Tall Tales." Mostly angst.

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**Nurpled**

So that's what Sam thinks of him. A drunken idiot who'll chase after any ditzy bimbo in a skimpy skirt.

Dean likes to think of himself as kind of smart, though he knows that Sam is smarter (which is a given, since the kid's a friggin' genius), but he's not a complete retard. Dean never graduated high school, but he's got a GED. Well, it's not in his legal name (the paper says _Bruce B. Wayne_, actually), but Dean took the test, and he's the one who received the envelope containing the congratulatory letter and the certificate from Bobby, whose mailing address he'd used.

Not-Starla _was_ a classy chick, and she _was_ smart. She sure didn't think he was dumb, did she?

After all, she hadn't blown him off when he'd sat down next to her and started talking to her about the strange happenings in the college town. They'd gotten to discussing contemporary cultural myths and legends, which happened to be what her master's thesis was on, and he'd offered up examples from some of his own experiences…um, stories he'd heard while on the road.

Anyway, in his experience, straight women who have both good looks and brains like to converse with equally attractive and brilliant men. It's a proven fact, with plenty of "scientific" data (gathered with care in the back of his Impala and other romantic getaways) to back it up. It's not an accident that most of his conquests in high school were fellow students in his science classes.

Dean can be smart when he wants to show it.

The women Dean likes fall into three categories: fun to talk to, fun to, you know, _be_ with, or both. Because Dean loves fun, he really does.

That's where the alcohol comes in. Alcohol makes a pleasant buzz in his head, turns him on when he's in the mood, and numbs the pain when the stress of the hunting gig (and what Dad told him) gets too bad. Sex is good for forgetting shit too. And as a combination—_whoo!_ that feels _awesome_.

So can you really blame him if he gives in to his base instincts and drinks, beds, and makes merry in general? Does that really make him a dumb lush?

Eh, maybe it does. Dean kind of does work hard to hide his smarts from Sam. Because alright, so he _had_ been pulling Sam's leg when he said that chick in the bar was oh-so-mesmerized by his stunningly good looks, but dude, it's not like Dean's gonna tell _Sam_ about how much he geeked out with the girl. No, because he does have some sense of self-preservation from little brother's teasing. Besides, "book stuff" is Sam-land, and "cool stuff" is Dean's territory.

Sam's supposed to be the big geek playing walking encyclopedia and straight man to Dean's sarcastic straight-shooter suaveness. Sam smart puppy-eyes, Dean dumb womanizer, people talk lots. That's how it goes.

Those purple nurples _were_ really good though. They're actually just grape jelly shots, made with plenty of alcohol. Dean _loves_ grape, especially that grape-flavored lip gloss a lot of girls like to wear. He likes the way the tingle of the alcohol slips smoothly down his throat, and all the way down to his—well, wouldn't _you_ like to know?

And what's that Sasquatch brother of his talking about? He totally _blahs._ All the damn time. When he's in the car, when he's in the shower, in his sleep, all the time, right in his ear. _Blah blah-BLAH blah-BLAH. Blah._

Seriously.

Dean needs a drink.


	3. Chapter 19 Punch Drunk Love

**Nineteen bottles of beer on the wall**

Summary: John Winchester and alcohol, Part One. This one's warm and fuzzy and slightly hilarious: John's courtship of Mary Campbell. Teaser - Mary has a mean right hook.

Warnings: Very PG (or maybe PG-13 at the most). References a few episodes/quotes that I think might spoil some things in the story if I mention them here (or really, it's just more fun to try to figure out). PM me or review if you want to know the answer or if you just want to guess.

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**Punch-Drunk Love**

John wasn't a hard drinker to begin with. The occasional beer by the lake with the rest of the kids from school, sure, but it wasn't all the time. It was just a little social drinking anyhow. No harm in it.

Then the war came, and things got rough. Liquor got real useful then. Shoot, John reckons he spent most of his down time buzzed up, at least. His tour finally ended, and he came back home. He kept drinking, worried his momma practically to death, but he needed the alcohol to numb his mind. The things he'd seen…

Mary changed things. They'd gone to school together, from the time they'd been tiny Mary Campbell fetching a stolen ball back from wee Johnny Winchester, and bringing him down to the ground with one well-placed kick to bring the toy thief to shame.

Well, they'd hated each other ever since, but somehow, in the sweltering jungles of 'Nam, he'd found himself wondering what ever became of her, if she'd married anyone, wishing he were back in Lawrence just so he could see her pretty smile in that angelic face framed by perfect golden waves. Then he'd wince and his hand would unconsciously go south to where she'd kneed him once as sophomores in high school over a comment that she deemed to be "overwhelmingly sexist."

That woman sure was something, he'll tell you that. Mean right hook, too.

Anyhow, he came home, a war-torn soldier older than his years warranted, and he forgot about the blonde angel who'd gotten him through so many agonizing nights. There were other women, easier women, who gave him what he needed without questioning him or frowning at the amount of whiskey he drank.

And then he saw her. Just walking down the street, head high in the air like she owned the town, and pretty blonde hair streaming behind her in the breeze. He fell, boy, did he fall. He got up from the bus bench he'd been sleeping off his daily hangover on and followed her in a daze. Three blocks from where he'd started, big bad war hero John friggin' Winchester got his ass handed to him by a hundred-pound woman in a lacy white sundress, wearing three-inch heels, no less.

"Mary, Mary, it's me," he shouted as best he could from where his face was mashed up against the alley wall.

The tight grip on the arm twisted up behind him eased, and John relaxed, only to find himself flipped over and pressed back against the wall. He gaped vapidly at the girl who'd been beating him up since grade school.

"John? John Winchester?" A wrinkle creased the flawless porcelain forehead. "What the hell are you doing, following me like that? You scared the crap out of me! I could've—" sputtered Mary angrily.

Oh, and she cussed too. Dirty. A slap to the face snapped John out of his dreamy musings.

"Winchester!" Mary all but shouted as she yanked on his shirt.

"H-have dinner with me?" he stammered out. Years later, John remembers thinking, _Where on earth did _that_ come from?_

She recoiled, as expected. "What? Why would I want to have dinner with you?" She shoved him back against the wall and stepped away, a quizzical expression on her face. John thinks it should have been a clue as to who Mary Campbell actually was, when she spit "_Christo_" at him.

"My name's John, 'member?" he'd told her. Back then, he was a naïve idiot; no matter what he'd seen in Vietnam, boy, he hadn't seen nothin' yet.

Well, Mary, satisfied that he was one hundred percent John Winchester and not a demon, sighed, refused his offer, and dragged him to Jay's to get a cup of coffee to sober him up. Then she walked (more like frog marched) him home and dumped him on his momma's front porch with a stern, "Ask me again when you're sober. I don't feel right beating up on a drunk man. I like an even playing field."

Maybe he took that the wrong way, but he laid off of the alcohol, shaved his stubble and cut his hair, and got a steady job at his father's shop. Having done that, he put on a clean suit, bought a bouquet of roses with his first paycheck, and went the bakery where Mary worked.

The fresh scent of baked goods hit his nostrils as soon as he entered. Mm, pie. Then he noticed the girl holding the tray. Helloooo, Mary. She was just standing there, with that tray of fresh-baked goodness in her hands, and by god, he wanted to marry her then and there, she was that beautiful.

A pie to the face shook him out of his daydream, and he realized that he must have said that out loud because she was right in front of him now, the rest of the pies safe on the counter.

"I thought I told you to sober up before coming near me again," Mary was saying, hands on her slim hips.

"I am!" John cried, throwing his hands up. "If I'm drunk, I'm drunk on you!"

That stopped her cold. "What?"

"You do this _thing_ to me, I dunno. It's just…You're it," he said quietly, not caring how lame it sounded. "You're the one."

"O-kay," she said, slowly, drawing out the vowels. A perfect eyebrow arched. Then her face changed, suddenly.

He didn't know what any of that meant. "Okay?"

"Okay." She tossed a dishtowel at him. "Wipe your face first. Wouldn't want to be seen with you in public looking like a horror movie reject."

He handed her the roses in return, blushing under the cherry pie filling. "Brought these for you."

Mary turned the same bright red John's face was as she stared at the bouquet. "Thank you," she said after a moment. "I like red roses."

And so she did. The first things she planted in the garden once they finally saved up enough to buy a proper house for their growing family were bushes of red roses. Mary loved those rosebushes, and John loved them because she did.

Now, it wasn't a fairy-tale marriage, the way John would like to think it was—it had its ups and downs, like any other relationship—but it wasn't as bad as some couples' he could name. Sure, it drove him right back to drink once or twice, but Mary always let him come home once he blew off some steam and knocked on the door with his tail between his legs, each time with a bouquet of red roses as a peace offering. It was the way things were between them…until that night.

That night, his world ended.


	4. Chapter 18 Jim, Jack, and Jose

**Eighteen bottles of beer on the wall**

Summary: John Winchester and alcohol, Part Two. The aftermath of November 2, 1983.

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**Jim, Jack, and Jose **

That fatal night in November of the year his second son was born, John Winchester's life burned up with his wife, his darling Mary, the woman of his dreams. All of their wishes and promises, their hopes and dreams, they all went up in an inferno of orange flames and black smoke, burning and choking the very existence out of him.

And what he saw…He knew what he saw that night, and no damned idiot cop was going to tell him different, no sirree. He _saw_ her, burning to death in front of him, _on the ceiling._ Shock, his frickin' lily-white ass. He'll give _him_ shock.

Anyway, the pull of the bottle was too much for him, seeing that no one believed a word he said, shaking their heads and looking at him and his boys with unwanted pity, and he fell down that slippery neck into the broken glass gullet of caustic liquor, down, _down_, into oblivion.

One chilly afternoon, he woke up from another drunken night to find his four-year-old son staring silently at him from across the room with his baby brother clutched in his arms, as if he'd never let go since his father had told the toddler to take Sam and run to safety. It wasn't the tears on the young face that broke John out of his trance, for there hadn't been any more to be wept after the first week of trauma and motherlessness; it was the emptiness he saw in the green depths, the vast hole of desolation that grief leaves.

He reached out a hand to his sons, crawled to them, and swept them up in his arms. "I'm so sorry, baby. I'm so sorry." He rocked Mary's boys, sobbing his apologies into their small bodies.

That was Christmas, one of the bleakest the Winchesters ever had.

Dean didn't say anything. He didn't say anything for almost two years after Mary's death. Even then, when he got bigger and started talking and laughing, almost like that happy little boy he'd been before the fire, Dean never said anything when it came to John and drinking, not a word to stop him from swallowing that poison whiskey, nothing to stop him from going out to a bar for a beer or five. That look in his too-expressive eyes, even though he tried to hide it, was enough of a stinging reproach.

That same sad, disappointed expression Mary had had whenever he'd returned to the bottle.

Well, John couldn't stand it most of the times Dean got that look—boy didn't even know he was doing it, couldn't know that John saw Mary in that look each and every time—but even though he knew he was doing wrong, he went and took that drink anyhow. Only way to numb the pain, other than hunting down that evil sonofabith that killed his Mary.

There are a handful of days in the year on which he always gets shit-faced, just like clockwork, year after year. Mary's birthday, the day he first asked her out, the day she said yes, the day they got engaged (which coincided with the day her parents…died), their anniversary, the day she was killed and left her young boys motherless, the day he finally realized that little Dean had gone mute, the day he realized that little Sammy was a burbling baby no longer but an independent teenager…

John Winchester's had a lot of bad shit happen in his life. He figures that justifies his long-term affair with Jim, Jack, and Jose. 'Course, he makes sure he don't think of his sons, and especially Dean and that _look_ (just like his mother's—he don't think of _her_ either), when he does his reasoning. The whiskey goes down better that way. 


	5. Chapter 17 It's My Party

**Seventeen bottles of beer on the wall**

Summary: Sam's overwhelmingly normal twenty-first birthday isn't exactly how he'd imagined it would be.

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**It's My Party**

Sam eyes the shot glass full of amber liquid with some trepidation.

It's not as if he's never had a drink before. Because he has, on numerous occasions. Or maybe not _that_ many. But he's had his fair share, for a just-turned-twenty-one year-old anyway, and not all just for fun and giggles.

Like that time when he was seventeen. A werewolf had sneaked up on him and slashed him across the back. He doesn't remember much about what happened that night, just the excruciating, white-hot pain exploding across his spine, the loud bang of his brother's gun launching a bullet into the monster, the werewolf's angry snarl as the silver hit its chest. He remembers Dean's cool hands and steady voice near him, trying to calm him so Dad could stitch up the gushing wound.

Sam remembers too the fiery liquid Dad finally forced down his throat to knock him out (so he'd stop screaming and let him work), and Dean's knowing and apologetic look of sympathy on his worried face before the darkness took him over.

Dean.

The one constant in his life, until Sam decided he'd had enough of Dad and his _crusade_. The thought of Dad makes his blood boil, a Pavlovian response.

Sam throws his head back and dumps the contents of the shot glass down his throat like a seasoned alcoholic, much to the amazement and admiration of his friends.

Yeah, it's not the first drink Sam's ever had, but it's his first legal one.

His _first_ first drink was with Dean. The night of his sixteenth birthday, after a pretty awesome _Star Wars_ marathon and pizza dinner, Dean had suddenly stood up, pulled the keys to the Impala out of his pocket, and thrown them at Sam.

"Hey Sammy. Ya wanna go to a bar? You're driving."

Pretty sweet, huh? Well, aside from the "Sammy" part of it. And the killer hangover.

It feels wrong somehow that Dean isn't here to share a drink with him. The thought makes him glance at the cell phone that he's subconsciously pulled out of his pocket.

He flips it open…and snaps it closed again. No, he's not giving in to the sudden roiling wave of homesickness that has overcome him. Not tonight. It's his birthday, his twenty-first birthday. This should be a day of celebration, spent with his friends and fa-…spent with his friends.

Sam puts the phone back in his jacket and directs a smile that he hopes is natural at his aforementioned friends. They don't seem to have noticed his momentary lapse in jollity.

Except for Jessica. Always perceptive (_kind of like Dean,_ his traitorous mind supplies), she shoots a worried glance at Sam from beside him. He shakes his head and broadens his smile. When she nods, still looking not quite satisfied, he puts his arm around her, reassuring her that he's really alright. She settles into his side with a contented sigh and nestles her head trustingly back against his shoulder.

Brady slaps him on the shoulder and invites him to a game of pool. "I'll go easy on you," he says.

Sam accepts with a hidden smirk. Yeah, more like _he'll_ be the one going easy on _him._

He's lining up his shot when he hears the muffled revving of a familiar engine somewhere outside the bar. He freezes, heart stuttering in his chest. Then he smiles and chuckles softly. No way. Just his overactive imagination that Dean always used to tease him about…right?


	6. Chapter 16 The Party Crasher

**Sixteen bottles of beer on the wall**

Summary: Companion piece to "It's My Party." Dean's POV.

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**The Party-Crasher**

Dean watches his younger (and much taller—so not fair) brother from his seat in the dark corner.

Twenty-one.

Baby Sammy, his little snot-nosed kid brother, is legal now.

Twenty-one.

The six-month-old baby he'd carried out of their burning house the night their mother died, the baby whose first word was heard only by big brother, the toddler who'd followed him around all the time, the one for whom Dean had beat up more bullies than he had fingers (and toes), the annoying, stubborn jackass of a brother who'd picked fights with Dad, and who'd left three years ago for college.

That Sammy.

"_It's Sam,"_ he hears in his head. _"Not Sammy."_ Dean can practically see the eye-roll. Nah, little brother will always be "Sammy" to him, even when they're old geezers with walking sticks and wheelchairs. Well, if Dean even lives that long.

Sam will, though. Sammy's gonna be a lawyer, imagine that. With a family business like this, a lawyer in the family might come in handy. _If_ the rest of said family could get along, that is.

Dean sighs and takes another swig from his bottle.

Across the room, the stereotype of a rich frat kid plunks a shot glass full of a clear white liquid down in front of Sam. Sam's face turns solemn, as if he's contemplating the momentousness of this event. Heck, knowing him, he probably is.

It's not Sam's first drink. No one knows that better than Dean. Now Sam's first drink…oh man. He chortles at the memory.

Sam's sixteenth, Dean let Sam drive the Impala, snuck the kid into a bar after dinner and movies, and got him shit-faced. Totally, utterly, _completely_ shitfaced. It's not his fault birthday boy was a lightweight. Two beers. _Two._ Good thing Dad wasn't around, else the next morning, Sam might have begged _him_ to kill him and end his misery, instead of just Dean, and Dad really might have.

Hangovers. Dean chuckles again. Greasy cheeseburger served up on a dirty ashtray. Now _that _was fun.

Sam's face darkens, the change only perceptible to a close observer (like Dean), and he quickly tosses the alcohol back like a pro.

_Damn, Sammy,_ says Dean to himself,_ thinking of Dad, are we? Now why the hell are you thinking about Dad, of all people? _Oh yeah, normal stuff, right? Kid's always had issues about "normal."

Like how normal kids don't have weapons training and hunting practice (speaking of which, Dean's been tailing Sam for over an hour, and he hasn't even turned around _once_—getting rusty there, kiddo) on top of homework. They don't move every three weeks. They don't get hurt, and nearly killed, on hunts. They go to college, they have homes, they don't eat exclusively at diners. Normal, normal, normal. Everything Dean and Dad couldn't give him.

Well, he's got it now, Dean thinks. Doesn't need big brother anymore. Or so he thinks, anyway.

Want proof? See that? Sam just took his phone out of his pocket. He's not gonna call though. He's thinking too much about it. Just watch. Dean knows his brother too well.

Dean's hand hovers over the phone sitting on the table next to his own drink anyway.

Sam flips the cell open. Huh, maybe this year will be the—nope. The plastic clicks shut.

See? He was right. He's always right.

Dean sighs and stands, pauses for a moment, then picks his bottle back up, and raises it in a toast to the group of college kids sitting in the bright light, his brother's shaggy head sticking out like a giant in a room full of midgets.

"Happy birthday, Sammy."

He finishes the beer, drops some bills on the table, and casts another look back at his brother, who's got his arm draped protectively around the pretty blonde he's been dating for six months. Blondie (Jessica Lee Moore, aged 20, psychology major) snuggles up to him. Attaboy.

Now Frat Boy's wheedling Sammy into playing pool with him.

Dean chuckles to himself. Sammy-boy's gonna clean him out. Unless he's feeling stubborn, in which case he'll try pathetically hard to lose every game. Oh, Sammy.

He leaves the bar with a small smile, feeling better than he had when he'd walked in; he's seen his brother, seen how grown up he's gotten (grown up and _up_, the stork-legged little bitch), seen him with that normal life he's always wanted.

And Dean didn't talk to him, didn't even approach him. Best birthday present he could have given, he rationalizes. _Not_ being there and messing things up when Sam doesn't want him invading his life.

Except he was. He's always been there for Sam's first everything (well, except for his first, ya know, _lay,_ but he sure heard about it right after), so there's no reason why Dean should miss Sammy's first legal drink.

That's the sort of thing normal brothers would be around for, right?

He guns his engine and roars out of the bar's parking lot, wondering if Sam had in fact noticed him, and was only pretending not to see him…Nah, Dean's a sneakier bastard than even Sam can detect.

Because he's just that good.


	7. Chapter 15 Requiem for a Hunter

**Fifteen bottles of beer on the wall**

Summary: Post-NRFTW, Bobby POV.

Warning: This one is kind of graphic. Not for the faint of heart and queasy of stomach. Also, a crapload of angst. You have been forewarned.

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**Requiem for a Hunter**

_Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine_ - Requiem Mass

* * *

Flies buzz around the still body on the bed. _Calliphora vicina._ Blue bottle flies.

Bobby knows they're laying their eggs in the soft, exposed _goo_ of the open wounds. He can see the maggots, already a squirming white mass all over the ragged torso, feasting and reproducing on the decaying flesh. They congregate in places where the skin is already open, either naturally or torn by the claws and teeth of ravenous hellhounds.

They're crawling in the nostrils of the straight nose, and Bobby can see that the mouth, slackened in death, is starting to fill with larvae. The closed eyelids twitch, and he's reminded that if he is so inclined to pry them open, he would find, not green-hazel eyes full of life and smirking up at him, nor even those very same eyes clouded in death, but two eye orbits swarming with the maggots that seem to be filling the empty body with gruesome, false life.

They'd tried to sew the boy back together, painstakingly stitching the gaping wounds closed, but the skin had been torn in so many places, and the gashes had been so large, that the work was shoddy at best. Still, they'd spent many long hours passing the needle and thread through the cold, decaying flesh, in an effort to leave the man with some dignity, even in death.

Sam had been silent throughout the ordeal, quiet except for a few hiccups and sniffles. He hadn't said a word since Bobby had found him on the laminated wooden floor, sitting in a pool of his brother's congealing blood, rocking the cooling corpse desperately in his arms, as if he could will the soul back into the body by simply wishing for it hard enough.

The older man had allowed himself a moment of grief, removing the worn cap from his head and wiping a tear from his eye, before stepping over the already decaying body of the blonde that had housed the demon Ruby. Bobby didn't know what had happened in that room, but he knew it was bad, very bad.

* * *

_Buzzzz_

* * *

Dean, oh God…

Reaching down to the shaking shoulder, he whispered, "I'm so sorry, Sam," his hoarse voice breaking the spell the violent death had cast over the room. "We—" his voice failed, "We have to go. Sam. We gotta _go_."

Sam shook his head, and gripped his brother tighter, burying his face in the blood-drenched shoulder. "Go," he said, or maybe it was "No." "Leave us alone. _Leave us alone,"_ he sobbed.

Bobby didn't know what to do, short of forcibly pulling Sam up with one hand and trying to wrangle De-…the body with the other. Neither would come willingly; both would have the same dead weight quality. So he waited, waited to Sam to calm down enough to listen to reason.

The sound of far-off sirens was what shook Sam out of his trance. The heart-wrenching sobs trailed off as Sam finally looked up. Bobby took this as a sign that the boy might be ready to go now, and squeezed his shoulder again. "Let's go, Sam."

Sam's eyes slowly focused on the grizzled face before him. "Bobby?" he said, looking for all the world like a lost little boy. "Dean, Dean's _gone._ He's _gone._" Boy sounded like somebody'd run over his puppy or something, only worse. It was his brother, the one constant in his life, who was gone.

"I know, son," Bobby said gently, not wanting to frighten the kid. "We gotta go, Sam. Somebody called the police."

The wide forehead creased. "No police, Bobby. Can't…" He looked around at the lake of drying blood around him, bewildered. "The blood. Can't clean it up. Won't come out, like Lady Macbeth."

Bobby tugged on Sam's arm this time. "Let's go," he said, disregarding Sam's mumbling. "We'll have to leave the mess. I'll help you carry him."

This prompted a low growl from the boy, who wrenched his arm out of Bobby's grip and hugged his brother closer. "He's _my_ brother. I'm gonna take care of him. It's _my_ job now."

"Alright," Bobby said soothingly, hiding his nervousness about the rapidly approaching sirens. "You'll carry him. We need to get him out of here though, okay?"

This apparently sounded like a good deal to Sam because he nodded and got up off of the floor, slipping and sliding in the blood underfoot. Dean's head lolled loosely from its place in the crook of Sam's arm. The empty green eyes stared accusingly at Bobby as Sam passed by with him.

They got Dean settled in the back seat of the Impala, wrapped in sheets from one of the beds and several layers of plastic garbage bags to keep what blood was left in the body from leaking through and staining the seats of Dean's beloved car.

They went as far as they could before the danger of driving off the road became too high. They were tired, in both body and spirit, and adrenaline wears off after a while. They stopped in a small town in the middle of Illinois, where the 55 meets the 51.

Since Bobby had less blood on his clothes, he went and got the room, while keeping a very close eye on the younger man through the office window. He needn't have, seeing that the only thing Sam did was get out of the front seat to sit in the back with his brother.

Having paid and gotten the key, Bobby went around to the Impala to see if Sam would allow him to help maneuver Dean out of the car. When he opened the door, the smell hit him; the metallic tang of blood, the contents of the loosened bladder and bowels (Dean, had he been alive—and Bobby wished he was _but if he had a nickel for every wish_—would have been mortified to find that not only had he peed himself, but he'd shit his pants too), and the cloying scent of death. It nearly made him gag, but he recovered himself without Sam noticing.

Surprisingly, Sam accepted the tentatively offered assistance, and together, they hauled the body, still wrapped like a mummy but stiff with _rigor mortis_, into the room. Bobby, keeping an eye out for anyone who'd see and call the police on them, was thankful for the cover of the darkening dusk.

They put the body on the bed and stood there just looking at it. Then Sam reached out a hand and gently unwrapped the bags twisted around the still figure until there was only the thin cotton cloth left, hard and tacky from dried blood. When that too was peeled off, a dry sob erupted from the old man.

Dean, oh, _Dean_.

The boy who'd somehow wriggled his way into his heart, from the first moment he'd spotted the tiny kid with the sad green eyes hiding behind his Daddy's legs on his front porch. How long ago was that? Twenty-three, twenty-four years, wasn't it? Damned long time. Boy had grown into a man, a good man, and he'd died that morning. That ain't right. Young man like him, one of the best men Bobby'd ever known, dead, and an old codger like him still breathing, it ain't right. It simply ain't right.

Sam held the cold, dead face in his hands, brushing his thumbs over the slack features, rubbing at the droplets of dried blood from the arterial spray. The eyes were closed—Bobby hadn't been able to stand the accusatory gaze any longer while they were wrapping him up.

Once the plastic was off the body, the smell grew stronger. Bobby got the ice bucket and filled it with warm water, got a couple of the crappy motel towels and threw it in to soak. Sam had gotten a knife out in his absence, which gave Bobby a jolt before he realized that it was for cutting the clothes off of the stiff body.

The knife slid under the sleeve of the dark jacket, ready to slit the fabric when Sam's hand stalled. The knife shook, tearing a few threads. Bobby reached out a hand. "Give it here, Sam. I'll do it."

Sam shook his head. "No. I should do it. He'd want me to do it." He took a deep breath and went on.

When that was over, they could finally see the full extent of the damage done—on the front. They'd take care of the front first, then flip him over to clean up the back. Until then…Bobby draped a dry towel over the groin, untouched by the hounds, to give the boy a semblance of privacy.

He handed one of the towels to Sam, who took it without a word. Silently, they wiped the dried blood from the smooth skin. Bobby, too, was reminded of Lady Macbeth as he rinsed the red cloth in rust-colored water. This blood would likewise stain his hands and conscience forever. This blood, of which each drop was precious to him.

He could remember the boy, teaching his baby brother how to walk, shielding him from everything from bullies to monsters to even death. This boy, who had so little thought of his own self-worth that he'd sold his soul away to return to his brother the life he'd guarded so loyally.

They started stitching after the blood was gone from the surface. This part was familiar, something they'd done many times after numerous hunts. The only things different about it were that they didn't have to worry about giving the patient pain, and that the wounds didn't ooze blood as they pulled the edges closed with their black thread.

Bobby couldn't help thinking that if Dean was here, he'd make some stupid joke about Frankenstein's monster. Sam would counter with a comparison to the girl from that Tim Burton movie. If, you know, Dean wasn't lying here dead with his soul on the express train to Hell.

With another shudder, Bobby went back to work. His eyelids drooped, but he kept working, knowing he wouldn't be able to rest anyhow. The needle flashed in and out of the cold flesh. In, out, in, out, in…

* * *

The first fly arrived at midnight. Its buzzing broke the silence in the room. Two pairs of eyes watched as it landed on the tip of Dean's nose. Beady multifaceted eyes stared back at them. The fly washed its face and lifted itself onto its front legs so it could wash its back two legs. The transparent wings shone iridescently in the lamplight.

It's a blue bottle fly, a carrion fly.

Bobby knew enough about corpses—freshly dead, long dead, don't matter, he'd seen 'em all—to know that there was nothing he could do to keep the flies from coming and landing and multiplying on this new and fertile corpse.

He shooed it away anyway.

* * *

_Buzzzz_

* * *

The flies buzz, a swelling and undulating chorus.

One fat maggot spills out of the mass of its brothers and sisters swarming in Dean's mouth, and lands on the stubbled cheek. It wriggles helplessly on the prickly surface, until, unable to find purchase, it slides down the jaw and plops onto the plastic covering the bed.

Bobby eyes it with distaste.

Sam's been sitting here for days, watching his brother decompose. Another day and the neighbors will start complaining about the odor. The room already smells like one of the many houses they visit in the course of their job, the houses with the ripe, rotting corpses inside.

Bobby decides it's been long enough. "Sam," he says, voice rough from whiskey and disuse. And grief. Can't forget that one. "Sam, it's time."

Greasy chestnut locks shake. "No, not yet." Sam sounds like a zombie himself. Lack of sleep, lack of food, lack of _brother_ will do that to you. "I can't yet."

Bobby sighs. "He's starting to stink up the room." He's already thrown up in the bathroom three times. The buzzing's giving him a headache. "He- Heck, Sam, he started smelling two days ago. We gotta…take care of him."

"_I'll_ take care of him." Sam's voice is harsh, fierce. Sam sounds like his brother.

Bobby shifts on his feet. He takes his hat off, scratches his head. "I'll—I'll go get wood then."

"Get boards."

"What?" Bobby steps towards Sam, puts a hand on his shoulder and turns him around. The movement causes a black curtain of flies to rise up before settling again.

Sam holds Bobby's gaze steadily. "I said, get boards. I'm not burning my brother."

Bobby sighs. "Sam, he would have wanted—"

Sam stands. "You don't know what he would have wanted," he bellows. "He never _said_. _I_ say we're not burning my brother. When I find a way to get him back, he'll need his body."

"Sam."

Sam goes back to his vigil. "Boards, Bobby."

Bobby gets boards. Pine, nice solid pieces.

Sam puts the coffin together. Bobby puts out a hand to help but is waved away. Sam makes a cross too, to go over the grave.

They bury Dean a quarter of a mile off of the highway, and only four feet down. "Just in case he wakes up before we can get him out," Sam explains.

Sam doesn't put in the last boards until they're ready to put the dirt back in. Bobby tries to hand him nails to secure the lid, but Sam shakes his head and grabs the shovel.

The sound of the dirt hitting the pine boards is one of the saddest things Bobby's ever heard, although he can barely hear it over the sound of the buzzing. Most of the flies have deserted the body, though their larvae were still wriggling on the body (and in it) when they put the lid on. Even so, Bobby can still hear the adults buzzing.

"He was a good man," he chokes out, and hurries away to the car, leaving Sam to have one last moment alone with his brother.

* * *

The flies buzz. They're not really there; they're in his head, and nothing he can do will quiet them. And so he drinks. Drinks enough that the nefarious buzzing in his head hums along with the buzz of the alcohol.

The flies drone on. It's a shit requiem for a hunter, but it's all Bobby's got. Requiems are meant to grant the dead eternal rest (_Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine)_, and if it's one thing Dean Winchester ain't getting right now, it's rest.

Bobby shudders and takes another drink as the flies buzz louder in his mind. Sometimes he thinks he can hear a familiar voice chiding him for letting Sam slip out from under his watch; other times, he thinks he hears a pain-filled cry underneath all the buzzing. He doesn't want to listen closer to find out.

The flies buzz. Bobby drinks.

* * *

_I heard a fly buzz when I died_ - Emily Dickinson


	8. Chapter 14 The Glorious Uses of Whiskey

**Fourteen bottles of beer on the wall**

Summary: In a Winchester operating room, all the supplies you need are a pen knife, some dental floss, a sewing needle, and a fifth of whiskey. Based on "Changing Channels."

This one's a lot lighter than the last one. Much less blood and gore, too.

* * *

**The Many Glorious Uses of Bourbon Whiskey**

Sam stares at the tray holding rows of shining stainless steel utensils. His hands are sweaty inside his white latex gloves.

Various sizes and shapes of scalpels, forceps, clamps, tiny rulers…What the hell? How is he supposed to use these to _operate_ on his _brother_?

Well, it's not like he's never used a scalpel before—in high school biology, they dissected a frog—but Dean's not some farm-harvested amphibian hatched and raised specifically for the purpose of ending up pickled in formaldehyde to help a ninth grader understand the circulatory systems of vertebrates better. No, he's _Dean._ Sam can't dissect his brother.

Dean's not dead, for starters.

But a little voice in the back of his mind tells him that he will be if Sam doesn't get his ass moving soon.

He glances back though the observation window at Doctor Whatever-her-name-was, the one who'd slapped him, and she waves at him and simpers. Right.

"I need a…pen knife, some dental floss, a sewing needle, and a fifth of whiskey." That's the kind of stuff he's used to working with. It's not like you can get a hold of lab-sterilized surgical equipment when you live out of a duffel bag and have fraudulent insurance cards.

And oh God yeah, he's really gonna need that whiskey.

The nurses stare at him incredulously. What? Move! Oh right, he's supposed to be a brilliant, brilliant doctor… "Stat!"

That seems to be the magic word because it makes the whole operating room explode in a flurry of activity as the assistants rush about trying to get him all the things he'd asked for.

The pen knife and the dental floss get to him first. Dean's been bleeding the whole while, but strangely, he's been extremely coherent and _there_ for a guy who just got shot in the back ten minutes ago. It's weird. Sam's finding TV-land very bizarre. When they get back to the real world, he's not watching TV anymore. It's kind of lost its appeal.

Someone brings him a sewing kit. "Where's the whiskey?" he asks.

The nurses glance at each other with nervous expressions. Finally, one woman brings her hand out from behind her back, and holds the shaking bottle out to him.

Sam grabs it and takes a loooooong pull from it. "Thanks." Everyone seems even more anxious than before, if that's even possible.

An audible gasp goes around the operating table when he sloshes a portion of the liquid all over the open wound on Dean's back. He glances up. "What?"

A nurse stammers. "B-but Doctor. That's…" She falls silent.

Sam shrugs and proceeds to sterilize the needle—his way, the Winchester way. He pours alcohol over the thin sliver of metal and flicks his lighter (and thank goodness the trickster'd left _that_ in his pocket).

Whiskey's a damned good sterilizer, ya know?

That's not the only thing it's good for, either.

Sam remembers one morning when he'd woken up with an enormous porno 'stache on his upper lip, drawn with a black Sharpie. After raging at Dean for several minutes and promising revenge, he'd retreated to the bathroom to try to scrub the damned stuff off. The rough towel only turned his skin bright red, and left the marker. The result was that his lower face now looked like a caricature of the devil.

Oh yeah, he was so ready to _kill_ Dean.

Then the thought had come to him that this was _permanent marker_. The Winchesters use permanent marker for a lot of things, normal stuff like writing on labels and containers, but also in the course of their job—sometimes they have to draw sigils on their skin to perform a spell or protect themselves.

They'd just splash a little whiskey onto the marks and rub themselves clean. Presto-cleano—no more permanent marker.

Sam had stormed out into the room to find the whiskey bottle and glare some more at his laughing brother. Dick. "Gonna drown your sorrows in the bottle, Sammy?" he'd taunted.

"It's your turn next, you ass," Sam had retorted. Oh, and had he had his revenge.

Dean _really_ hadn't appreciated the new aftershave Sam had sneaked into his toilet kit. He'd smelled like a skunk had decided to play water tag with him for a whole week. That was an entire seven days of not getting _any_. Oh, was he pissed. He didn't think that little factoid Sam told him—that the musk comes from the anal scent glands of the skunk—was very interesting at all.

Sam pushes the needle through his brother's flesh and pulls the floss up. There's a neat row of stitches in Dean's back—better than a real doctor's, he thinks, and he should know. He ties a knot in the thread.

"We okay? How's it looking?" Dean's voice is muffled, coming through that pillow with the hole in the middle of it so he could breathe. Sam can't get over the strangeness of talking to Dean while performing surgery on a freaking gunshot wound in the middle of his brother's back. And get this: they're _in_ a TV show. _Doctor Sexy, M.D._ Yeah.

Sam snips the extra floss with the surgical scissors. "Yep, you'll be fine." Just like any other hunting-related injury, right? You just clean the wound out real well with holy water and whatever alcohol you have on hand and either bandage it or stitch it up. Simple as that. Everyday Winchester-style surgery. Motel-room operations.

Except this time, it was a _gunshot wound. _To the_ back. _Dean shouldn't be able to just walk away from this. Yet here he is, talking to him while Sam's putting dental floss stitches in his back. That just isn't normal.

Sam turns around to see if Doctor Lovesick McSlappy's still there. Oh yeah. She sure seems to be a clingy one. Mouthing 'I love you' and sighing, indeed. Sam grimaces and returns his attention to his brother.

Yeah, Dean'll be fine. It's a TV show, right? People have miracle recoveries all the time. Doctor Dean seems to be a central character to the show, so they wouldn't kill him off, right? Or is it sweeps or finale season now? Shit, when's the last time he watched TV for fun? It's probably been months. Damn.

He takes another look at the stitches he'd just put in his brother and second guesses himself. What if he'd killed his brother by using shitty supplies and starting an infection? Shit, shit, shit.

He grabs the bottle of bourbon and pours a little more onto Dean's back. Dean hisses and cusses him out. That's perfectly alright.

Then he shrugs and raises the bottle to his own lips to settle his nerves…

Dude, is that clapping? What. The. Hell?

And where the hell his bottle? That's not right.


	9. Chapter 13 Comfortably Numb

**Thirteen bottles of beer on the wall**

Summary: Sam analyzes his brother's drinking habits.

Warnings: Spoilers for Seasons 4 and 5, specifically, the episodes "Yellow Fever," "Sam, Interrupted," and "Dark Side of the Moon." One f-word (and I know this sounds so…_little girl_, but it's the first time I've ever actually _used_ it. *gasp* Bad me. *scolds self and scours mouth out with soap*). Title from the Pink Floyd song.

* * *

**Comfortably Numb**

It started with that case in Rock Ridge, with that spirit of the man who was dragged behind a truck until he was dead, Sam finally realizes. At least, that's when it started becoming a real problem. Dean's drinking, that is.

Dean hadn't been a real heavy drinker to begin with.

The hunting life is hard. You deal with the terrible things you see by drinking and killing more of those evil sonsabitches. If you can't deal, then you end up in the loony bin like more than just a few hunters. Sam and Dean know some guys like that—Martin, to name one. So Dean used to have a couple of beers at the bars they frequented, maybe had a few shots. He'd get buzzed for fun, sometimes he'd drink more than usual after a particularly bad hunt, but he sure wasn't a chronic alcoholic.

Then bad shit started happening, like Dad dying, and Sam dying and Dean making his deal. When Dean came back after Hell, he was…different. Not different, as in he was a complete stranger, but he seemed more tired, more vulnerable. Big brother wasn't really "big" in Sam's eyes anymore, just older, worn out. In the very beginning, when he'd first come back, he'd seemed almost unchanged (he said he didn't remember anything at all of Hell), and it was Sam who was different, but as time passed, Sam started noticing things, small things that were just _off_ about his older brother.

Like the way Dean started avoiding any meat that had to be cut with a knife, or how he zoned out and stared at the grotesque masks on display during Halloween as if fascinated and horrified by them at the same time. And the drinking. Dean started stealing nips here and there when he thought Sam wasn't looking. Of course, he never went on a hunt actually drunk, until that ghost sickness case.

It started out alright, as bad cases have a tendency of doing. They'd interviewed the sheriff and gone to the morgue to poke around. Sam got squirted with spleen juice, which was real fun. Then Dean had started getting panicky about his car. Mind you, that's really a normal occurrence, so there was no way Sam could have realized that something was up with his brother then. Well, Dean started getting _really_ paranoid about driving (he was going the posted speed limit, for crying out loud!) which was what made Sam suspicious. That, and the EMF went off when it was pointed at Dean.

By the time the ghost sickness had taken its full effect, Dean was chugging, really chugging that whiskey. That was the first and last time he'd gone into a job completely tipsy, but upon reflection, Sam's pretty sure that that's what started Dean depending more on the alcohol to get him through his days. Thinking back, from analyzing his brother's symptoms, he's certain that Dean's suffering from classic depression and alcoholism. Maybe PTSD. _Something_, anyway. Sam's gotta look that up when he has the time.

Maybe the drinking helps. Maybe it's a problem. Sam's certainly not going to mention it, seeing as Dean'll probably get defensive and bring up the demon blood addiction. That'll just start the whole argument rolling again, and Sam doesn't want that. He's tired too, he's tired of fighting Dean.

When they check into that mental asylum disguised as patients to help Martin out with his case, Sam's surprised by the honesty with which Dean spills all his secrets and feelings to the doctors, even though that was the plan. He's never seen his brother so willingly and completely truthful to _anyone_. It's ironic that they're telling the truth to seem like they're making things up.

Well, that case gives Sam a jarring look at how exactly Dean's feeling. He's messed up, completely, totally, irreparably fucked up, and Sam has no idea how to fix him. So he lets his brother numb himself with alcohol until he passes out into a dead sleep and doesn't wake up 'til morning. Before they leave each motel, they clean up the cans and bottles together without a word.

By the time they get killed and take the Heavenly Disneyland tour, Dean's going on about fifty to sixty drinks a week, which might be a sign for Sam to step in. But, Sam thinks, maybe he shouldn't. This is how guys like them deal with the shitty nightmare that is the hunting (and Winchester) life. Self-medication, repressing memories, whatever works. They take care of their crap and shut up about it.

Because seriously, there's an Apocalypse going on—maybe Dean's got the right idea.

* * *

AN: Kinda feeling depressed right now, what with real life stuff an all. Question: Is anyone actually _reading_ these? I think I need to write myself a happy!fic.


	10. Chapter 12 MILF

**Twelve bottles of beer on the wall**

AN: Thanks for the reviews reassuring me that you are indeed still reading this. This chapter is lighter, I think. Or at least it's based on a really funny scene from the show. Enjoy, and thank you again!

Summary: Hot, young, and dumb is just what the newly divorced Crystal needs. Inspired by the 'Sam-Gary drinks a daiquiri' scene in "Swap Meat."

* * *

**MILF**

Stud-Bun orders a banana daiquiri, of all drinks. And he shows the bartender his ID before he does. Maybe Crystal's been off the market for too long, but Stud-Bun looks a few years older than twenty-one. Looks like he's a regular Matthew McConaughey under all those layers, too. She'd like to see for herself to make sure though, she thinks, as she sucks seductively on her straw.

It takes a while to get through to him that she wants to go…with him…to have sex. He seems really excited about it. Cute. Crystal wonders vaguely if Stud-Bun's a virgin. Seems unlikely, the way he looks, but still, you never know.

Anyway, he's hot, young, and dumb. Just what she needs.

After twenty-two years of being married to pot-bellied, older, and 'I'm your husband; that automatically makes me infinitely smarter than you, you stupid blonde bitch,' this deliciously muscled specimen sitting beside her is just _exactly_ what Crystal needs.

So what if she's now a cougar? She hasn't been single in close to twenty-four years since she started dating and got married to Richard-the-neural-surgeon. Now with the divorce papers signed, Crystal Robinson (no longer Dr. Grant's miserable wife, thank you very much) is free, free as a bird. And boy, is she loving it. Take that, _Dick_, you cheating, doctorate-flaunting pond scum.

As soon as her divorce was finalized, she'd taken a loooooong bath, with lots of bubbles and scented candles and her favorite music on as loud as it could go. Then she'd done her nails (bright _red_), put on her make-up, dried her long blonde hair into loose-hanging curls, and slid into a new slinky black dress. She'd stood in front of the full-length mirror—_her_ full-length mirror—and posed with her hands on her hips.

Ugh, her arms. When in the world did they get all wobbly like that? Those look like wings or something. Disgusting.

She'd hurriedly rummaged through her closet to find a suitable jacket to wear over the dress. Hm, she'd nodded. Sex-yyy. She's still got it.

Then she'd turned on her brand-new stiletto heels and driven to that bar on Fifth and Main. Time to find some fun of the young and hot variety. Those young teeny-boppers better watch out because here comes the cougar—hot, and with _years_ of sexual experience.

Ms. Robinson is a MILF, and she is proud of it.


	11. Chapter 11 The Promise

**Eleven bottles of beer on the wall**

AN: Sorry this one's a little later than usual. It's still Friday, though, so it's not _late_. I had something yesterday and didn't have time to write.

Summary: Tag to the drunk!Sam scene during "Playthings."

* * *

**The Promise**

Sam was drunk, very obviously so.

Come to think of it, Dean's never seen Sam quite like this before. Getting Sam tipsy is usually a task that Dean takes pleasure in, seeing him loosen up and relax, getting that giddy grin on his face, and seeing the troubles melt off of his shoulders.

Sam used to be a happy drunk, before. Before Stanford, before all those fights with Dad had escalated to wall-shaking screaming matches. Back when it had been just the two of them sneaking off to a bar or having a couple of beers at their motel room of the month, once in a while when Dad wasn't around to see and shake his head over it.

The first time Sam had gotten drunk, absolutely shit-faced, was on his sixteenth birthday. Every time after that day that Sam had touched alcohol, Dean had been with him—he was even usually the one that paid for the beers. That is, until Sam had his last fight with Dad and left.

Those solitary beers after that had tasted awfully bitter.

Dean doesn't know the next time Sam had a beer after that. Probably his twenty-first, since Sam had taken to being a law-abiding model citizen like a kappa does to water. He bet Sam was the designated driver for all of the parties he went to in college (if he went to any, which was also probable). This thought makes him snort, and gaze down fondly at the sleeping figure on the bed next to his.

Oh Sam, Sammy. Why'd he have to go and ask him _that_? Of all things, to ask him, his _brother,_ to kill him if he turns into something that he's not. That's…Dad was an ass, but Sam should have known better than that, especially after seeing what it had done to him when Dad had told him that before he'd died.

But then again, Sam was drunk, drunk voluntarily and alone. Driven to drink, it seemed like. Dean wishes now that he hadn't spilled the beans about what Dad had whispered in his ear before leaving him. If he'd held out, like he had for so many months already, Sam wouldn't have pressed him to promise what he knew in his heart of hearts that he could never do.

"You have to kill me, Dean. Promise." A promise wrung out of him the way only a little brother can of his elder sibling. Dean never could resist the earnest puppy-dog eyes accompanied by a teary "Please, Dean."

Alcohol brought out what made Sam _Sam_ and increased it tenfold—He's always feeling that he has to _save_ people out of some need to redeem himself for his perceived role in the deaths of others (Mom, Jess, Ava, the guy that hung himself…the list goes on), and now, to change his destiny, his perceived destiny. Then there's the childishness inherent in him always around Dean ("You're _bossy_," "Well I'm older, now eat your cereal, kiddo").

"You _have_ to kill me; Dad told you to." Yeah, about that. Dad was an ass, there's no denying that—Dean's known that for years, but he'd followed his orders without question…unless it was Sam's well-being that hung in the balance. And killing Sam, that's _big_, that's something that you just don't do. You tell your son, your four-year-old son, that he's in charge of keeping his baby brother safe, you drum it into him his whole life, and then you tell him that he has to _kill_ his brother? Like Dean said, Dad's an ass.

And Sam's an ass too, albeit a drunken ass, but an ass all the same, for asking him to do the same thing. Using _Dad_ to make him promise—that's low, by the way—just because Dean's never disobeyed their father in his life (or so Sam thinks). Then he has to go and pull the little brother card, that _thing_ that he can do, even when he's too drunk to see straight, it seems like.

"Promise, Dean. You have to promise me." Dean can remember smaller fingers than these clutching at his clothes in exactly the same way, the same earnest, tearful eyes asking him to promise that he'll be sure to be right _there _in front of the school to pick him up after class, that the monsters will never get him, that he'll be really careful when Dad takes him out on the next hunt.

Dean's never been able to say no. So he promises and hopes that Sam forgets it all by morning, that it'll all be a hazy memory to him.

Then he promises himself that it will never, ever come to that. Sam will never change into something that Dean will have to kill. He'll promise that.

* * *

AN: I know that the past tense of the word "hang" in this context is "hanged" not "hung," but that's what they used in the show, so I'm sticking with that to make it seem like Dean's the one talking here. But yes, I know, and it gets my goat every time someone uses it wrong.


	12. Chapter 10 Best Birthday Ever, Maybe

**Ten bottles of beer on the wall**

Summary: It's Sam's sixteenth birthday, and Dean's got a decision to make.

AN: **Shannanigans**: Not quite what you were expecting, maybe, but here's the story you prompted.

* * *

**Best Birthday Ever, Maybe**

Dean's staring is starting to creep little brother out. He can tell; the small wrinkle between the dark brows barely discernible under the wavy brown bangs, the nervous tip-tapping of the slender fingers on worn-out jeans getting too short for the freakishly long legs, the frequent glances at him out of the side of his eyes, the beginnings of the bitch-face…

And finally, there it is: "Dean! Stop that!"

"Stop what?" Dean parries with his eyes wide open in a too-innocent-to-be-innocent expression.

"Stop staring at me," Sam growls. "Why are you staring at me? It's annoying."

Dean rolls his eyes. "'Cause you're ugly, that's why."

Sam sighs exasperatedly. "Then why are you staring at me? You wouldn't _want_ to stare at me if I was ugly. And I'm not ugly!" he adds for good measure.

"Yeah, sure you're not," Dean smirks.

Sam huffs. "I'm not. Watch the movie." He turns back to the TV in an attempt to set an example.

"Dude, movie's almost over." Dean stretches, his heels scraping against the worn carpet.

"It's still my birthday," Sam replies harshly, still staring hard at the screen, on which the spirits of Obi-Wan, Yoda, and Anakin Skywalker smile proudly at Luke. "I wanna watch the movie."

Dean snorts. "Okay, yeah, let's watch the rest of the two minutes left of _Episode VI_, shall we?"

Sneaking another look at the scowling features of the newly sixteen-year-old, Dean thinks that maybe he'd better put off that _plan_ for next year, huh? Sam's obviously not mature enough for—

"Sorry, Dean." The mumbled apology comes as a surprise. "I just wish Dad was here."

Dean sighs, leans forward with his elbows on his knees. "Yeah, me too. But you know—"

"—he has to work?" Sam cuts in. "I know. I just want a _normal_ birthday for once."

Dean's gotta frown at that. "Dad tries, you know. He does."

"Does he?" Sam looks up at him through his bangs. "Sometimes, it doesn't seem like it. He misses Christmases, Thanksgivings, Father's Days, _birthdays_…"

"Sam," Dean's lips are in a tight line. He's trying not to blow up at his brother, but sometimes, he just _pushes_ it, ya know? "Sam, he does try. Little things that you don't see, or don't wanna see, he does 'em. Alright? So chill."

Sam's too busy glaring holes into the rolling credits on the screen to answer. "Why were you staring at me earlier?"

Changing the topic, huh? Dean can deal with that. That's a 'Dean' tactic, that one. Sam doesn't want to fight on his birthday either.

Dean purses his lips. "I was thinking about something."

Sam's lips twitch. "You were _thinking_? I didn't know that was possible. Hope you didn't strain anything."

Dean slaps his palm into Sam's gut. "Very funny, birthday boy. I was thinking about giving you a haircut." He flicks a finger at the chestnut waves spilling down over his brother's ears. "It's too long. Someone might think you're a girl; a _really _ugly, really tall girl."

Sam tries to pull his bitch-face, but the laughter shows in his eyes. "You suck. And stay away from my hair." He squirms away from the finger poking his side. "Dean, stop tickling me! I'm _sixteen_. Sixteen, dude."

Dean dodges the hands batting at him and sneaks another tickle at an exposed expanse of skin. "Uh-huh. That squeaking you got going on is real convincing, man."

"Deeeeeaaaannnnnnn!"

Giggles taper off into full-blown laughter as the tickling turns into a full-blown brotherly wrestling match that has them rolling across the room, bumping into the rickety furniture and flaking chunks of drywall off of the walls. Finally, tired out from the brief tussle, they plop down on the couch, panting.

Sam flops his head over to look at his brother, who's gazing at him with that odd expression again. "What?"

Dean suddenly stands up. "Hey Sammy. Ya wanna go to a bar? You're driving." Then he tosses the keys over. The keys to the Impala. The car Dad had given to Dean on _his_ eighteenth birthday.

Sam catches them mostly by reflex. His mouth's hanging open, and his eyes are glazed over.

Dean waves a hand in front of him. "Sam, you still in there?"

Sam blinks. "Yeah, yeah. Dean." He stares at his brother. "You're letting me drive? The Impala?"

Dean nods, putting Dad's old leather jacket on; it's now his, as of his fifteenth birthday. "Yep."

"And we're going to a bar." Sam's still on the couch, staring up at his brother.

"Yep."

"To drink alcohol? Both of us?" Sam's still having trouble wrapping his genius mind around the idea.

"Yep." Dean turns around at the door. "You coming or what? And here, pop one of these—don't want to be in the car with you and your pizza-breath." He tosses a clear plastic box of Tic-Tacs at Sam.

"_You_ have pizza-breath," Sam retorts, still on auto-pilot. He's driving the Impala, _and_ Dean's taking him to a bar. Best. Birthday. Ever.

* * *

"The tablesh underwaddah, Dee. _We're_ underwaddah. You think we're mermaids, Dee? We can _breathe_ underwaddah. Maybe we're mermaids. I wondah if we haff gills. Fish haff gills. Maybe mermaids haff gills, so dey can breathe underwaddah."

Dean catches his brother as he tips over. He chuckles. "Dude, I think you've had one beer too many, which is saying something, since you've only had _two_." He slings the long arm over his shoulder. "I think you might be a mermaid, Sammy, but no way you're calling me a fish-chick."

Sam's eyes are at half-mast; he's too drunk to reply. He stumbles and his legs momentarily get tangled with Dean's, until the older brother gets them all sorted out. "Yeah, I think you might need to hurry up and get those sea-legs, fast. Whaddaya think, Sammy?" Dean props Sam up against the car while he unlocks the door.

"Fishy," Sam says to the Impala's side mirror.

"That's nice." Dean opens the door and gently maneuvers his brother in. "Watch your head."

"Head's underwaddah," Sam mumbles, curling up against the window.

Dean chuckles and starts the car. "I need a video camera. Times like this…I need to get one of those."

* * *

"I hate you, Dean." The words are heaved into the toilet bowl, along with the contents of Sam's stomach, or what's left in it. Sam spits into the vomity water. "I hate you."

Dean leans against the doorway, disgustingly hangover-free. "Ya gotta learn to hold your liquor, Sammy. Ya gotta be a _man_!" Then he chuckles that annoyingly chipper _chuckle_.

Sam hates this birthday. Worst birthday ever. He gags again and groans. "Oh God, kill me now." His head's pounding, the slightest light burns his eyes, and his intestines are threatening to come out of his mouth. He groans again for good measure. "Kill me."

Then there's a warm hand on his back, rubbing circles. Ohhhhh, that feels gooooooood. He whimpers into the stained toilet seat. Dean, head hurts. Fix now.

"Okay, kiddo. Drink this." Something cold hits his hand and he looks up with bleary eyes to see that it's a glass of water. "Mmgh." Gentle hands help him guide the glass to his lips and wipe away the water that dribbles out messily. "Thanks, Dean."

"Here." Now, there are pills being pushed into his mouth. The glass comes up again. "Swallow." Sam does.

"Okay? Done puking? Good. Now let's get ya back into bed until those aspirin kick in." Then he's being guided off of the floor and half-carried into the darkened motel room. The bed feels nice, so he snuggles down into the warm sheets and wraps his arms around his pillow to anchor himself in the roiling sea of the hangover.

The bed dips a little, but Sam doesn't mind. It's just Dean. Dean's always there when he's sick. "Sorry, dude. Didn't think it would hit you this hard."

Sam pries his eyelids open a crack. "Best birthday ever," he smiles weakly. "Thanks, Dean."

"Go to sleep, Ariel."

Huh, what?_ The Little Mermaid_? Or Shakespeare?


	13. Chapter 9 Rite of Passage

**Nine bottles of beer on the wall**

Summary: Companion to the last chapter—John finds out he missed out on that first beer with Sam.

* * *

**Rite of Passage**

It's a whole year and two months after that first beer when a werewolf slashes a gash the length of the Mississippi River into Sam's back. John wants to stitch the wound closed, but Sam's crying and writhing too much to get the job done. He pulls the whiskey bottle out, pours it onto the gushing wound, and closes his eyes when Sam yells and crushes Dean's fingers, blubbering from the pain.

Dean sees it in John's eyes before he even begins to reach out to his younger son. He helps him prop Sam up so they can tip the burning liquid down the young throat, as much as he can swallow.

Sam whimpers again and his eyes slide closed. After some agonizingly long moments, his squirming and arching body goes mercifully limp. Dean checks his pulse to make sure he's alright and nods at his father. _Go._ Shuttered eyes tell the father to start stitching.

The needle flashes in and out of the ruined flesh, almost hypnotically. Finally, it's done, and they bandage the injury and lay Sam on his stomach so his weight's off of his back. Then they settle in for an all-night vigil, another Winchester custom whenever one of them is hurt or sick enough to warrant watching.

John stares at the tall, gangly figure sleeping on the bed in front of him, gazing past him, through him, seeing the small boy with the bright smile, who was always chattering about something or another. Where had that little boy gone? Where had the time gone?

"So much for buying him his first beer." It slips out before he could stop it.

Dean looks up at him, surprise etched on his young face. The expression in his eyes is too old though. John winces. "Don't worry about that, Dad. I took care of it," Dean says. _This wasn't the first time he's had a drink; he hasn't missed out on that rite of passage. I've made sure of that. _

John swallows hard, feeling like he's lost something he'd forgotten he had. "That so?"

A muscle twitches in Dean's cheek. "Mm-hm," he nods, unsure of the reception that answer will get. "Sixteen. His birthday."

John can't help it. "_Sixteen_?" His eyebrows are sky-high, he can feel it.

Dean straightens up. "Didn't want something like this to be his first time. I wanted his first beer to be a _good_ memory." Dean's never defiant in front of Sam, but he's got his moments, when he's alone with John, when it comes to Sam.

John deflates. Yeah, he wanted it to be a good memory for Sam too. He wanted to be the one to do it. But then again, Dean's been more of a father to Sam than he. It hurts to admit it, but it's so. It's right that Dean had been the one who was there for that. It's only fair that Dean didn't want Sam's first to be like his—Dean's first mouthful of alcohol had been on a night just like this; at the ripe old age of fourteen, after he'd caught a poisoned claw in his thigh and had screamed himself hoarse and just kept on screaming until John couldn't stand it any longer.

"That's good," John says finally. "That's good." He glances at his older boy. "You get him good and drunk?"

A fond grin breaks out on Dean's face. "We're talking about me here. Of course I did. On a whopping _two_ beers," he says with a snicker.

John chuckles. "Lightweight, huh?"

"Lighter than a feather. He started talking about mermaids, Dad." Dean gazes affectionately at his slumbering brother and strokes his thumb over a thin scar on the limp hand. "Mermaids." He shakes his head.

"Hangover?" John asks.

"Like you wouldn't believe," Dean replies.

"You tell him about the secret family remedy for getting rid of a hangover?" John leans forward, as if passing on a great secret. "It's a greasy pork sandwich served up in a dirty ashtray."

The two of them laugh quietly, so as to not disturb the youngest Winchester.

"Dude," Dean says, "that was an awesome movie. Kelly LeBrock was _hot_."

* * *

Movie reference: _Weird Science_


	14. Chapter 8 Two Guys Walk Into a Bar

**Eight bottles of beer on the wall**

Summary: It sounds like a set-up to a bad joke, I know. It ain't. I ain't crazy.

AN: This one's in first person, in a conversational style. The cussing implied is more severe than that which is actually used. But lots and lots of _implied _cussing. And pretty much the opposite of politically correct.

* * *

**Two Guys Walk Into a Bar **

Two guys walk into a bar…

It sounds like a set-up to a bad joke, I know. It ain't. It's a set-up to a _baaaaaad_ friggin' joke. No really.

You know why it's the set-up to a seriously bad friggin' joke? You wanna know? You really wanna know? You're gonna think I'm crazy. But I ain't. I ain't crazy, friggin' apeshit nuts. I ain't. I ain't pullin' your leg either. You think I'm a joker? Do I _look_ like a joker to you?

Next you're gonna think I'm a drunk. I ain't no drunk, no matter what that soft-headed nephew of mine says. I maybe _was_ drunk at the time, but I know what I saw.

I _know_ what I friggin' saw that night.

And it was friggin' apeshit crazy, alright? It was nuts.

You ain't gonna believe me. You ain't gonna believe that two guys walked in here, into Ray's Bar, few years ago and chopped the heads offa six goddamn people. Like somethin' outta a goddamn horror movie or some shit. No, you ain't gonna believe me.

Know why? 'Cause it's friggin' crazy, that's friggin' why!

Alright, alright. Here's what happened. 'Cause you all just wanna know, right? Here's how it happened.

Now I'm sittin' here, right here at this very table, nursin' a drink like always—whiskey, straight up—and two guys walk in, right? They just walk in through that door, look around the place a bit, and sit down in that table there over in that corner.

Pretty Boy—he looks a coupla years older than the other guy he come in with, which has his hair all long and shit hidin' his face like that Justin Beaver kid, you know who I mean, that friggin' gay little kid singer all over the friggin' internet—but Pretty Boy looks like one a those goddamn movie stars, ya know? All ten foot long eyelashes and puffy lips and shit. Too pretty to be a real man. Gay as a Christmas tree, if you ask me, those two. But got nothin' against them, it's a free country, God loves us all. Amen. Drink to that.

Anyway, Pretty Boy gets up and goes over to Fat Joe, talks to him a bit, more than to just order two beers, like maybe he's talkin' him up, ya know? And maybe he slips him a bill or two, get him really going. Fat Joe and Pretty Boy, they look over at the pool table in that there middle space right there where Green Willie and Slim Tim're playin' now.

Now that night, there was seven people standin' there around that table. Seven of 'em, two gals and five men. Now these here folks ain't the quietest of people, you seein' what I mean? Someone makes a bad shot, they was all over the place, drinkin', shoutin', yellin', whoopin', the whole works. They fair made my head pound, the ruckus they made. Rowdy folks, which I don't rightly like, them gettin' in the way of my good quiet time here. I like it when there ain't nothin' but some good ol'-fashioned music on that there record box—nothin' like that new-fangled Hannah-Anna Fontana and Justin Beaver ear-rot crap—and my glass of Jack. I don't like it when people gets noisy. Give me a headache so friggin' bad it'll make a migraine look like a little bug bite.

Now this crowd, one of the boys notices Pretty Boy and Tall Beaver sittin' in that corner there. This kid, he's maybe twenty or so, just a kid, jabs the guy next to 'im, and the other guy on his other side, and the three of 'em goes and walks over to the two in the corner, like they out of one of 'em gangster movies kids eat up these days.

Now I dunno what they all said, on account of sitting way over here and them way over there, and the kid and his two buddies standin' with their backs to me, but it wasn't nothin' pleasant, I'll tell you that.

Sure, Pretty Boy was smiling, nice as can be, but oh, that handsome mug was hiding something, I can sure tell you that. 'Sides, Tall Beaver had this look on _his_ face, like he was already thinkin' of choppin' those guys' heads off—I'm gettin' there, I'm gettin' there.

Well, nothin' happens then, but Pretty Boy and Beaver getting up and headin' for the door, all nice and civilized. I let out my breath then, didn't even know I was holding it, but I shouldn't've, on account of—

Now hold on, hold on, I need a drink, my throat's dry as my ol' Aunt Fannie's behind, and she's dead, haha—thanks Heather honey, how's your daddy? Oh no, sorry to hear that. He was a good man, good man. Give my best to your momma.

Now where was I? Ah, yes. The two boys walk to the door, but Pool Boy grabs Pretty Boy's shoulder and bites his neck. I'm not kiddin', this boy's really chompin' on Pretty Boy's neck. Then I see this friggin' huge knife come out of nowhere and chop Pool Boy's head off. Right offa his neck, like it was made outta wax or some shit.

I look up and see it's Beaver. He looked pissed, real pissed, I tell you. He's got his huge-ass knife, like a friggin' machete knife in his hand, and is lookin' at the other two guys left, Pool Boy's buddies. Pool Boy's head's rollin' around on the goddamned floor like a retarded football or some shit.

And shit, holy friggin' shit! You shoulda seen his goddamn mouth, son. All this blood, red, still drippin' down his friggin' chin. And those teeth of his—I ain't _never_ seen teeth like his. Like a shark's mouth, that was. All sharp teeth with that blood all over. Now I seen this kid's mouth before when he was playin' pool and he didn't look like that. He looked like any other kid on the street. Nothin' wrong with his mouth but maybe he needed teeth braces or whatever torture wires they put on kids' mouths these days. 'Cept now there they was, a row of sharp-as-shit chompers right there where they shouldn't be.

All six buddies of his are standin' in front of Pretty Boy and Beaver now. And bless my soul if they ain't all got their teeth hangin' outta their mouths too, just like the ones in Pool Boy's head which is still rollin' around on the floor. And hell boy, they was _hissin'_. Like this: _Hisssssss, hissssssss_. Ain't never heard nothin' like that ever in my life before, and I honestly don't think I ever will. Sent shivers right down my back, it did. Made all the hairs on my back stand straight up at attention, yessir.

By this time, Pretty Boy's got a knife out too, just as big and shiny as Tall Beaver's. He's holdin' onto his neck to keep the blood in, but he's got that same pissed off look Beaver's got. Didn't know if it seemed like an even fight, those two again' those six, but what with all that freaky shit, I woulda been fine if they just killed each other off. That woulda made me a happy man.

But that didn't happen. One of them girl-critters lets out another hiss and jumps at Tall Beaver. I see right off that it ain't a smart idea—_Slash!_ Pretty Boy's machete comes down on her. While her head's busy fallin' to the ground and rollin' under the table, another girl runs at Pretty Boy and actually gets his neck, again. She's suckin' on it, like it's her momma's tit or some shit, and Pretty Boy's trying to get her off. Beaver can't help him, seeing as he's too busy fighting off the rest of the bunch, four friggin' shark-toothed bastards.

_Slash! Slash-slash! Whoo-pow! _Then all of a sudden, there's only one left. He just turns tail and runs faster than anything I've ever seen, and I seen some pretty fast shit. Beaver lets his machete down, goes to his partner, who's down. There's some slappin' of the face, maybe some sweet-talkin', and Pretty Boy gets up. Boy musta lost a lot of blood, 'cause he ain't lookin' so good now. They've got pressure on that neck o' his, but the shirt they're usin' is turnin' red real fast.

They look around the bar, and everyone's just frozen. Frozen like they jus' stopped there when that fight done started and stayed there. Now we're all of us waitin' to see if we're next on their list, if we're gonna all end up with our heads cut off by two crazies.

But no, they just stand there starin' back at us, Pretty Boy leanin' on his boyfriend a little bit, lookin' real pale.

"Sorry, folks," Tall Beaver says after a long bit, lookin' real 'pologetic. "Sorry. We'd stay to clean up, but we gotta get him some help. Yeah, so we'll just be leaving," he says, shufflin' them out the door. "Sorry for the mess."

Then an engine starts up and they're gone.

We're all just left sittin' there, Joe with his hand on a bottle, in the middle of pourin' out a drink into a glass that spilled over five minutes ago, and Heather frozen while wipin' down a table. Teddy and Randy with their drinks halfway to their mouths, we was all left frozen here for the longest time after.

Then Heather starts screamin'.

And I swear, all hell broke loose. All _hell_. Teddy done had a heart attack right there, Randy started screamin' louder than Heather was doin', and Joe took his gun out from under the counter, too late if you ask me. Me? I just finished up my drink and went on home, seein' as I thought I had more than enough to drink that night already. Thought I was seein' things, you understand.

But I looks in the paper the next mornin', and what do I see but '6 Beheaded in Bar; Police Baffled' on the front page. Now I says to myself, "Now Ricky, now Ricky, what you thought you saw last night must have been the truth, God's honest truth."

And that's the story I'm stickin' to.

I'll be goin' now, havin' finished my drink and all. What? Have they found those two men? Naw, my nephew Georgie's the sheriff, and he ain't found nothin' yet. Nor's he likely to, took after his daddy's side of the family, buncha goddamn weak-headed mooks. Those de-capertated heads did have them teeth in 'em like I said, for sure. You just go ask Georgie.

You wanna buy ol' Ricky another drink? Alright, alright, won't say no. Joe, whiskey, just like always.

* * *

AN: Edited after the first posting done very early this morning (about 2:30 am). I found some mathematical errors, like how two and four don't add up to seven, etc. :P All fixed now!


	15. Chapter 7 The Dean

**Seven bottles of beer on the wall**

Summary: Over the years, he became "The Dean" for her. Then he showed up on her doorstep. Maybe she was his "The Lisa."

AN: Not so much alcohol (the theme of these stories) as sex. It's not really graphic though, just PG-13 stuff, if that, even.

* * *

**The Dean**

He was hot. There's no denying it. And anyway, who in their right minds _would_ want to deny it?

He had the bad-boy attitude down, from the top of his short, spiked-up hair to his worn leather jacket, all the way down to those heavy-duty biker boots that he used to kick the asses of some guys that were "bothering" her, aka flirting with her in the hands-on way rough guys like to do. He bought her a drink, then she bought him one, and then all of a sudden, they were in his car (amazing car, by the way, equally as hot as its owner) groping at each other and making out like it was their last night on earth.

Lisa admits that at twenty-one, she was a naïve little girl, determined to rebel against the good Christian values her middle-class parents had brought her up in. She skipped classes, smoked, drank like a fish, and had one-nighters with random biker guys with no permanent addresses or even a phone number she could reach (if she even wanted to, which she didn't).

Looking back now, she was stupid to risk herself like that. Guys like that, they don't give a damn whether or not the sex they're having is safe, as long as it's good. Thank goodness Lisa never caught anything…except for a minuscule sperm cell that fertilized one of her egg cells and resulted in nine months of miserable vomiting and cramps that culminated in a painful thirty-nine-hour labor.

Ben's the best thing that's ever happened to her, and that's God's honest truth. She wouldn't change what happened for anything; she'd die first.

Even if she doesn't know who his dad is, even if she was drunk the night (or day) she got pregnant (she doesn't even know the exact date), even if she hasn't had sex since she found out she was expecting (and nine years is a _hell_ of a long time, just you try it and see).

She's Ben's mom, and that's who she was meant to be.

Still, Lisa fantasized. Girl can dream, right?

She remembered that green-eyed leather-jacketed badass angel who swooped down and charmed her right out of her pants, literally. She remembered that weekend they spent locked up in her apartment, having sex on every surface and in every position imaginable, with some "toys" that were probably illegal, and then some. She remembered the way he'd grinned when she told him she was a yoga teacher; she remembered the things he did with his—Well, the sex was amazing. Let's leave it at that.

She remembered his name: Dean Winchester. He became "The Dean," in the nine years since she'd seen him. His was the only name she remembered. All the other guys, the bikers, the truckers, the drifters—they all sort of amalgamated into a collective "sort of people" that she didn't want in her life again. She wouldn't let them within a hundred feet of Ben either. Not on your life.

But this Dean Winchester character, he was…different. He wasn't any younger, or older, than her usual fare—about her own age. He was certainly significantly more attractive than any of her previous and later conquests, but that wasn't why she remembered him. He was…a nice guy, a genuinely nice guy. Considerate, you know? Even though he seemed all tough and dangerous on the outside, once in a while, he'd show this incredible…well, "sensitivity" seems to be a weird word to use to describe the guy, but she can't think of another word that could describe the way he apologized if he accidentally bumped her up against anything, if he thought he hurt her in any way while they were doing their _thing_. He'd even asked her if she was sure before they left the bar, looking straight into her eyes with his dreamy golden-green eyes, as if trying to make sure she wasn't too drunk to make a good decision.

Sober or not, hell yeah, she wanted to have sex with him.

And in between the rounds of sex, they talked, just a little, but that was kind of nice too. She found out he had this little brother, smart as hell, and stubborn as a mule. And he was obviously very found of him, the way he talked about him in such a proud and affectionate way. _So hot._ Right, so maybe it was because she was ovulating or something, but that turned her on like _gawd._

So she dreamed and fantasized about Dean Winchester. For nine years, she remembered every single detail of all the things they did. When she made new "respectable" friends, all mothers themselves with kids Ben's age, and they gossiped about their wild days of the past, she always talked about one guy, and one guy only: "The Dean." He became kind of a legend over the years in their little group. To be honest, he'd become a sort of sex god in her mind as well. Not that she minded. She didn't think he'd mind either.

So when he showed up at the door, with a how-the-freaking-_hell _-did-he-get-even-hotter-over-the-years grin, her brain stuttered to a stop. You know how you feel when you've got this crush on an actor or singer or whoever and you know there's no way you'll ever be with them but you still fantasize anyway, and then they _show up on your doorstep_? Well, maybe you don't, but you know what I mean. That was how Lisa felt.

Nine years later, he came back. He even tracked her down at her new address. That's dedication for you; maybe she was his "The Lisa."


	16. Chapter 6 And the Kid

**Six bottles of beer on the wall**

Summary: "If it's not too late, I think I'd like to take you up on that beer." Lisa on Ben and Dean up to "Swan Song."

AN: *sigh* Why is it that I'm finding it increasingly difficult to include **alcohol** in my stories? I mean, these are supposed to be centered around it, right? Oh yeah, must be because I've never had any. *rolls eyes* Liquor does make a sort of cameo appearance in this one though…

* * *

**And the Kid**

She's been jittery for weeks. Weeks. Ever since _he'd_ knocked on her door and dropped that bomb on her.

"_I wanted you to know, that when I do picture myself happy, it's with you." _

That hadn't surprised her…much. After the initial shock of Dean Winchester actually standing there in front of her had settled in, that is.

But when he'd added,_ "And the kid,"_ that about tore her walls completely down.

See, Dean Winchester doesn't look anything like how you'd imagine a family man looking. He looks like he enjoys sex (a lot), liquor, and gambling. He matches his sleek black classic of a car, the badass leather jacket is his second skin. He is all that, but he isn't shallow either.

Lisa had gotten an inkling of what Dean Winchester was really like when he'd shared a few things about his brother all those years ago. He hadn't waxed poetic about him, obviously, since they were in between rounds of _ohsogreat_ sex, but what he'd said, the way he'd said it, and his affectionate-proud-loving expression as he'd said it—that was enough to make her pause and maybe actually fall in love with the guy.

Or maybe it was just the mind-blowing sex that made him memorable.

Still, whatever it was, Dean Winchester simply did not scream _family man_, or even _loves kids_ for that matter. That hadn't mattered way back then, when they'd had that weekend of wild and crazy sex, but in the years of being a mother to the best kid in the world, that had been the main selling point for her when looking for a guy.

There _had_ been guys who'd asked her out because they thought she was hot, because they thought she was funny, or nice, or just wanted a piece of her ass. Most of them had backed off when they'd found out she had a kid. Those that hadn't, well, Ben hadn't taken to them. At all.

Lisa shudders to remember the furious temper tantrums her son had thrown whenever she'd brought a man (two total over the years) home to see how he'd get along with the little guy in her life. But Ben was the final test, and if whatever guy she was dating at the time didn't pass, then oh well, she had a good time, and thanks, but bu-bye.

No one had ever passed the Ben-test. Obviously.

Until Dean. Dean, who'd been all but forgotten except for as a really, _really_ good sexual fantasy for nights spent alone (unless Ben wanted to sleep with Mommy). He'd wheedled his way into her house (and her life) after nine years of radio silence and had charmed her Ben like the Pied Piper himself.

All year round, day in and day out, she'd heard about "cool Dean" and his "awesome" taste in music," his "bitchin' car" and how he (and his brother) had "_whom-pow!_ burned the monster right up just like a superhero!" It would have gotten old, if it hadn't been a constant reminder of how much she owed Dean for her son's life. For her baby, for Ben.

He'd _cared,_ anyone could see that. It wasn't that he loved kids, he loved _her_ kid, and fully appreciated how cool and sweet and wonderful Ben could be. He'd seen it in only the few days he'd been here, and had even asked if Ben was his. Seeing how disappointed he'd been when she told him that she'd had a blood test done and that he wasn't the father (even though there was no test and she honestly didn't know)…well, suffice it to say that most guys in his situation would have been glad for dodging the bullet of responsibility that parenthood brings.

It had startled her so much that it had broken through the fortified wall she'd built around herself and her son. She'd offered Dean something she'd never offered any man before: she asked him to stay. And she'd felt an odd twinge in her heart when he'd reluctantly refused.

"_I got a lot of work to do,"_ he'd said, wistfully glancing over her shoulder at her life.

His work apparently wasn't done when he'd come knocking again. He'd wanted to know how Ben was. Almost three years later and he hadn't forgotten them. He'd looked like shit, though, with his eyes red from lack of sleep and stress, and it seemed like he was at the end of his rope, literally a step from ending it all. The things he'd said…He'd talked like he was dying, like he was about to sacrifice himself or something.

"_I wanted you to know, that when I do picture myself happy, it's with you," _he'd said with some difficulty, as if around a choked throat. _"And the kid."_

She should have been flattered, she should have blushed or smiled or something. She would have, if he hadn't scared her, the way he'd looked that day.

She knew that she had to get him inside, whatever she could to get him inside and _explain._ You don't just tell someone that they're "The One" and _leave_ to do whatever suicidal thing Dean was obviously thinking of doing. And then, he'd said that things were going to get really bad and he was going to make "arrangements" for her and Ben—what was she supposed to think? She only knew that she had to get him inside to keep him from killing himself or…whatever scary and crazy thing was he was going to do.

"_Come inside and let me get you a beer. We can talk,"_ she'd said, desperate, trying to coax him in like a jumpy stray. _"Just...just come inside."_

She'd resorted to begging: _"Please. And whatever you're thinking of doing, don't do it."_

Then she'd used her _son_ to try to get Dean to come inside and talk to her, _"Just stay an hour. At least say bye to Ben."_

He'd paused, he had, but in the end, he'd left her with a soft kiss and longing in his tired eyes.

And now, five jittery and anxious weeks later, he was back, looking…_broken_.

"_If it's not too late, I think I'd like to take you up on that beer,"_ he said, voice cracking and face crumbling. She gathered him up in her arms, and he fell into the embrace as if whatever last strength had been holding him upright had failed.

This sobbing, broken man, so different from the bright-eyed twenty-one year-old she'd spent that wonderful weekend with, had been through so much that was more terrible than there were words to describe it. After he'd cried himself dry, he sat there on her couch, staring down at the beer bottle he said he'd come back for, not drinking it, just staring. Lisa sat there with him, her hand comfortingly on his knee, waiting, waiting for the explanation that might never come.

Then he said, _"How's Ben?"_ in that ragged, shattered voice, and her heart broke some more.


	17. Chapter 5 Apocalypse Cocktail

**Five bottles of beer on the wall**

Summary: Castiel feels like a martini—shaken, and maybe stirred as well. Cas in the last part of Season 5.

* * *

**Apocalypse Cocktail**

_To mix a Fallen Angel, shake one and a half ounces of gin, half a teaspoon of white crème de menthe, the juice of half a lemon, and a dash of bitters with ice and strain into a cocktail glass. Top with a cherry and serve._

Castiel feels like a martini—shaken, and maybe stirred as well. He's so mixed up that he doesn't know what to think anymore. His carefully constructed understanding of the world—that God knows all, that He is always there, that He is good, that He is loving, that the angels are also good and are doing His bidding—has crumbled.

His head hurts. He thinks it hurts kind of bad. He thinks his grace hurts too.

In this past year, he has lost most of his powers, lost his faith in his brothers, and now, finally, he has lost his trust in his father. The edges of his world-view are blurring, and what used to be as sharp as the boundary between oil and water are now blending into a muddy confusion.

_To mix an Angel's Wing, pour half an ounce each of white crème de cacao, brandy, and one tablespoon of light cream carefully, in the order given, into a pousse-café glass so that they do not mix. Serve without mixing. _

That's why he'd emptied that liquor store of all its alcohol. It didn't help very much, only made him slightly disoriented and more blunt than usual (he can see that from the brothers' baffled expressions).

He can tell that Sam and Dean are worried about his sudden…what is the word Dean used? Oh yes, Castiel can tell that they are worried about his sudden drinking binge, and he is sorry (another human emotion that he's begun feeling recently, and frequently) to cause them worry, but he cannot but help but try to numb this pain that he has begun to feel in the depths of his entire being.

_To mix a Lost Cause, pour one ounce each of rum, gin, and lime juice over ice. Stir in four ounces of club soda._

The liquor does not help, and neither does the additional pain of what Dean refers to as a hangover. However, the bottle of small white pills (the label says "Aspirin") Dean throws at him does relieve the ache in his head. Headache.

His grace still hurts. Grace-ache. Soul-ache? Heartache?

The latter two do not apply to Castiel, since he does not have either, but he thinks they might be similar to what he is feeling right now.

Faith-ache.

_To mix a Smith and Wesson, pour one ounce each of vodka, kahula, and light cream into a glass filled with ice, then top off with Pepsi._

Castiel had removed his trust from the angels in Heaven put it on mortals on earth. He does not know who else to trust now, aside from the Winchesters and Bobby, and even then, is he right to put so much faith in them? For so long, he had thought that God and his brothers and sisters would be worth his loyalty, but in the end, they had betrayed him.

What if the brothers and the old man do the same?

_To mix a What The Hell cocktail, stir one ounce each of dry vermouth, gin, and apricot brandy with a dash of lemon juice and ice cubes in an old-fashioned glass and serve._

When he discovers Dean coming so close to surrendering to the angels, something inside Castiel snaps. He feels rage. This strong emotion he feels at Dean's betrayal is wrath. He pushes Dean up against the brick wall, hard, without regard for his fragile human anatomy and throws punch after angry punch into his face, his sides, his back.

This tiny human, for whom he had betrayed his own family, had in turn betrayed him.

_To mix a Devil's Advocate, mix one shot Bacardi Limon, one shot triple sec, three-fourths of an ounce of sour mix, one tablespoon of grenadine, and four ounces of cranberry juice in a shaker. Pour over ice._

Castiel doesn't want to be there when Dean says yes to Michael. He'll help them with their plan (Sam's plan) to get Adam back from Zachariah, but he won't stick around long enough to see Dean betray his brother's trust, like he had Castiel's.

Dean is weak, human.

Sam is too optimistic. He'll see; Dean will betray him too.

_To mix an Adam drink, combine two ounces of dark rum, one ounce of lemon juice, and one teaspoon of grenadine in a shaker half-filled with ice cubes. Shake well. Strain into a glass. _

In the end, Adam Milligan was the one who gave in to Michael. Sam had been right to keep his faith in Dean. Dean hadn't betrayed him; he hadn't betrayed humankind; he hadn't betrayed Castiel.

They don't know what to do. They'll think of a plan though. They have to.

_To mix a Death in the Afternoon cocktail, pour one ounce Pernod into a champagne flute and top off with five ounces of champagne. _

Bobby, the imbecilic old man, sold his soul in exchange for information on the whereabouts of Death. The demon Crowley also "threw in" the use of Bobby's legs as a bargain.

Bobby, Sam, and Castiel go together to a warehouse to prevent the shipping out of truckloads of a vaccine that will spread the Croatoan virus across the nation.

It's the first time Castiel uses a gun. It is…refreshing.

In the meantime, Dean meets with Death and is given the last ring and the instructions for using them in exchange for a promise. A promise that Dean will do whatever it takes to ensure that Lucifer is put back in his cage.

_To mix a Slammin' Sammy, add two ounces each of amaretto and triple sec to an ice-filled glass. Pour in four ounces of orange juice and top off with apple-cranberry juice to taste. Stir._

Sam has a plan.

It's a terrible plan.

He wants to give Lucifer his consent to possess him. He'll then somehow regain control of his body and jump into the pit, taking Lucifer with him.

It is a terrible plan.

_To mix a Big Brothers drink, combine two parts whiskey with three parts ginger ale and pour over ice cubes. Add a slice of lemon._

Dean agrees to the plan. He lets—no, not "lets"—Dean relinquishes his hold over his younger brother and now fully supports Sam in making his own decision.

Bobby and Castiel are in with the plan with the hope that the brothers will again prove the odds wrong.

Sam asks Castiel to watch out for Bobby and Dean. Castiel knows that he cannot promise that, and he says so, only realizing that he is supposed to lie after he does. He reassures Sam that he will watch over his remaining family. It might be impossible, but it's a promise.

It is still a terrible plan.

_To mix a Devil's Cocktail, stir one and a half ounces each of dry vermouth and port with half a teaspoon of lemon juice with ice, strain into a cocktail glass and serve._

It was a stupid plan.

Dean's the only one who has faith now, with Lucifer in Sam's body and the countdown to the big fight getting closer to zero.

_To mix a Grumpy Old Man, pack an old-fashioned or rocks glass with ice. Add two ounces of Old Grand Dad bourbon and one ounce lime juice, then top with ginger ale. Serve with sip stick, no garnish._

Noon of the day after Sam lets Lucifer in finds Castiel in another liquor store. The store owner is safely asleep, after being given the "finger," and so is not in the former angel's way as he contemplates the merits of malt whiskey versus grain whiskey.

Castiel thinks he likes the grain better; it has a higher alcohol count.

He sighs and with a flutter of his wings, appears in Bobby's library, startling the hunter and making him drop his glass of whiskey.

"Wouldya stop doin' that?" the grumpy old man sputters. Then he sighs and stands. "Ready to go? I got something you might like."

_To mix a Molotov Cocktail, pour a shot of vodka, float a splash of 151 proof rum, light it and blow it out, then take the shot down._

Bobby lets Castiel do the honors.

"Hey, Assbutt!"

It's the first time he's ever called his oldest brother a name. Dean thinks it's lame, but Castiel likes it. It's an insult he'd crafted by himself.

Doing that to Michael makes Lucifer angry at him.

_To mix a White Out, combine two parts of peppermint schnapps with one part each of Cointreau and cognac, and pour over crushed ice. _

Castiel doesn't remember much beyond Lucifer making him explode, again. What is it with the archangels and blowing him to smithereens?

He remembers floating in a white space, so bright that he can't see. His other senses work, though. He smells dust and the faint scent of alcohol, feels warmth, hears a consistent tapping noise that sounds like…fingers typing at a computer, then a loud "Crap!" before he is sent off to a field of dandelions in the middle of Nebraska.

The sun is bright, the sky is clear, and there is no sign of the heavenly brothers' fight.

_To mix a Gates of Hell Cocktail, combine an ounce and a half of tequila, two teaspoons each of lemon and lime juice in a shaker half-filled with ice cubes. Shake well. Strain into an old-fashioned glass almost filled with crushed ice. Drizzle one teaspoon of cherry brandy over the top._

He appears in the cemetery at Lawrence, where he'd met his last demise. He finds Dean on his knees in the grass, so many waves of grief and mourning and _alone_ coming off of him that Castiel doesn't even need his new powers to know how he feels.

With a touch, he heals Dean's ruined face, then moves on to bring Bobby Singer back.

Of Sam Winchester, there is no trace, nor is there even a dent in the ground showing where two of their Father's most beloved had fallen.

_To mix a Five Star General, combine a half ounce each of Jagermeister, 151 proof rum, Rumple Minze, Goldschlager, and Tequila in a shot glass._

When Castiel returns to Heaven, he finds the entire place in chaos. As the only being with the powers of an archangel in their midst, the other angels appoint him their general.

It is tiring, and he does not know if this is what he wants. He does think that this is what his Father wants him to do, so he accepts and tries his best to put Heaven back in order.

It is difficult.

_To mix an Apple Pie with a Crust drink, combine three parts apple juice with one part Malibu rum and sprinkle in cinnamon. Serve either cold or heated._

Dean's adjusting to his life with Lisa Braeden and her son. He still mourns his brother constantly. He thinks Sam is still in Hell with Lucifer, Michael, and Adam.

Sam has forbidden Castiel from informing Dean of the truth.

He still looks in on the small family once in a while, keeping himself cloaked.

He did promise, after all.

* * *

AN: All these, including the title, are real cocktails, the recipes of which I found online. I had no idea there were so many varieties. Some of them had _really_ crazy names, too: Smurf Fart? Grandmom's Slipper? Wisconsin Lunchbucket? Screaming Dead Nazi? Lol!


	18. Chapter 4 An Ordinary Man

**Four bottles of beer on the wall**

Summary: Chuck Shurley had always wanted to be a writer. Turns out, being a prophet sucks.

* * *

**An Ordinary Man**

He had always wanted to be a writer. Ever since those first (few dozen) love letters to Nancy McKeon (the immensely talented actress who played Jo in _The Facts of Life_), slaved over painstakingly by lamplight and written in shaky teenaged penmanship, Chuck had always wanted to be a writer.

He had always wanted to see his name in print; well, maybe not _his_ name, but a pseudonym, maybe. Charles "Chuck" Shurley just sounded so… unsatisfying and _ordinary_. Any penname he'd use would have to be cool, sharp, _dangerous._

He fiddled around with different names, the way a lovesick schoolgirl writes her name in hundreds of different ways, combining it with her crush's. He tried out a lot of them over the years: Ed Hacker. Axel Lund. Edward Scissorhands (Tim Burton stole that one). Machete Edwards. Carver Edlund. He likes the sound of the last one. Only, he'd never had the chance to use it.

Until the _Supernatural _book series, that is. I'll get to that later, though.

Chuck was an ordinary guy. Alright, maybe shyer, freakier, geekier, nerdier, than your typical Joe Schmo, but suffice it to say that Chuck would never, ever be voted "Most Likely to Succeed," "Best-Looking," "Most Likely to be Famous," and most certainly not "Most Likely to Save the World." He graduated from high school with straight Cs, went to an okay college, majored in Lit., did so-so in it, and managed to graduate with an average GPA. Ordinary, ordinary, ordinary.

So after he graduated, he tried his hand at writing. That was easier said than done. There he was, sitting at his computer with a shiny new college degree and nothing to type. Nothing, nada, zip. The genius of Chuck Shurley was uninspired.

He took lowly-paid, cringe-worthy, _humiliating_ jobs to pay the bills (just barely, and a couple of times, not even). For a dozen years, he mopped floors, fished around in clogged up toilets for hairballs, did garbage duty at his apartment complex—in effect, eked out a living so that he could do his real work. At one point, he had to sell his computer to get enough money to buy his month's ration of Cup-A-Noodle. Let's just say, Chuck Shurley in the nineties was the epitome of "struggling artist."

And to be honest, a part of Chuck liked that: the masochistic part of him.

Simply put, twelve years of no ideas took their toll; eventually, he took to drink.

It happens to the best of us, and Chuck was certainly not the best; he was, as I said earlier, an ordinary man. So he got drunk. He got trashed. He got so shitfaced that as is inevitable in such cases, he passed out in a puddle of his own vomit. Yes, sad story, happens to everyone. La-di-dah, la-di-dah.

At least he didn't land facing up, or else he would have asphyxiated like a rock star and we wouldn't be talking about him right now…or maybe we would, since the angels would probably have brought him back to life. But I'm getting ahead of myself again.

You see, up to this point, Chuck Shurley had been an ordinary guy. I'm drumming this into you because at this moment, Chuck joined the ranks of a bunch of not-so-ordinary guys. You probably know them, those old geezers out of the Bible, like Moses, Elijah, Abraham, Jacob, and the crazy guy with the big boat and the zoo, what's-his-name, Noah.

Chuck Shurley became a prophet.

Perhaps it is more correct to say that "Chuck Shurley came into his prophetness at this moment," since he had been a prophet from birth and nothing could ever change that, unless someone went back in time and murdered him or stopped his parents from getting hitched like in a movie, but that's nonsense because there's no such thing as time travel…or is there?

On Halloween of 2005,_ Anno Domini_ ("in the year of Our Lord," for those non-Latin speakers out there), Charles "Chuck" Shurley had his first vision while passed out on the linoleum floor of his dining room from eating too much candy (no kids had come to his door) and drinking too much vodka.

Imagine: Twenty-two years ago. A young mother is kissing her baby goodnight. This is Mary Winchester and the baby is Sammy. He is exactly six months old tonight. Now, an energetic tyke of four bursts into the room. This is Dean. His mother helps him say goodnight to his baby brother. Dad walks in; John Winchester was in the Marines during the war, but those memories are far behind him now. Dean rushes up to him, and is caught up in a warm embrace. He's as much Daddy's boy as he is Mommy's prince.

Fast forward a couple of hours: Mary wakes up to sounds coming from the baby monitor. John's not next to her, so she gets up and pads over to little Sammy's room. But not to worry, Sammy's already being taken care of. "Shhh," says the shadowed figure in the dark room.

Satisfied, Mary turns around and walks back down the hall to their bedroom. The lamp on the wall flickers, prompting her to tap on it and frown. Then she sees that the television set downstairs is on. John's left it on _again_. But then walking down the stairs, she sees that her husband isn't upstairs at all, but sleeping in a clearly uncomfortable position in the armchair.

Well, it goes without saying that Mary rushes to her baby's room, sure that something terrible is happening to her son…and she's suddenly pushed back against the wall by a force she can't see and which slides her up, up the wall and on the ceiling. She's looking down at her baby now; Sammy's gurgling happily, unaware of what's happening to his mother only a few feet over him. Mary screams; a red slash appears on her abdomen, marring the perfect white of her nightgown.

John wakes up and runs up to help his wife, but when he gets to baby Sammy's room, there's nothing the matter there; Sammy's still fussing like all babies do. Then a red droplet drips down, then another, and another, and so he looks up…at his wife as she bursts into flame like some kind of grotesque butterfly pinned on the ceiling being fired up with an invisible acetylene welding torch.

Holy freakin' _shit_, right?

John snaps out of it long enough to take the baby out of his crib and hand him over to the goofy-looking older kid, who was curious enough to run out into the hall to see what's up, and order him to take his brother outside as fast as he can and to not look back.

In the end, Mom doesn't make it, but the rest of the Winchesters sit on the front hood of what's to become home for the next twenty-five years or so, looking pretty darn traumatized.

And so concludes the Prologue, and the introduction of the _dramatis personae_ (that's "persons or characters of the drama" for those readers who are not scholars of dead languages). And…scene.

That's what Chuck saw that first night, and boy, when he woke up with a hangover the size of an elephant, he just sat there with his head in his hands and thought, "What the hell was that? It was kind of like a movie. That was a pretty good intro. Wonder what comes next." Then he threw up in his lap.

Let me tell you this: There were times after that when Chuck wished that he had _not_ wondered what happened next in the lives of the Winchester family because things got complicated for him, very complicated indeed.

It didn't seem like it in the beginning, when he was writing about two brothers on a road trip hunting monsters and demons and whatever goes bump in the night while searching for their missing father—that was fine. Only, he had to get drunk and pass out in order to get ideas. Otherwise, he got stuck with writer's block. Yeah, bummer, right? But he just took it like a man because he had finally come into his genius.

So he drank his way though _Supernatural, Wendigo, Phantom Traveler, Bloody Mary, Skin_—you get the idea. The books never really took off, but at least _some_ people were reading them and he got to use his awesome _nom de plume _(that's French for "pen name") and he _finally_ had the means (not a whole lot of money, but more than being a janitor) to actually full-on play the reclusive writer he'd always dreamed of being.

Chuck had always wanted to be a reclusive writer. Just like Salinger, but with a better hero. Make that "heroes." Sam and Dean could totally kick Holden Caulfield's ass, blindfolded _and_ with their hands tied, one-on-one.

Sam and Dean were cool. They could fight like ninjas, had a well-stocked armory in the hidden compartment in the trunk of their very awesome black '67 Chevy Impala, and had movie-star looks (or at least they were pretty enough to be on the CW). Plus, they had this unconquerable brotherly love of the sort that spawned thousands of Sam-slash-Dean fan fiction stories.

That's right, Chuck's books had fans, and these fans wrote fan fiction about the two protagonists. Some of them even had them in a romantic relationship, which was stupid—Sam and Dean? No way.

Anyway, Chuck was feeling pretty good until he got a notice in September of 2008 from Sera Siege at Flying Wiccan Press that they were now bankrupt and would have to stop publishing the _Supernatural _books after _No Rest for the Wicked_. Terrible, ain't it? So sad. Tragic.

That made Chuck go on another drinking binge (not that he had been exactly sober the last three years) and pass out again. Then—whoa. He dreamed about Dean waking up in a pine box. His coffin. And an _angel_, and Sam exorcizing demons with his mind.

Chuck had to write that story plot down. He simply had to; the artist in him simply would not quiet until he had it all typed up and printed out on sheets of white copy paper. Well actually, each time he tried to stop writing, he'd get a vivid vision accompanied by the fiercest headache imaginable. He tried to stop the dreams by not drinking, but that didn't do much either: he just ended up having phone sex all day and depleting his bank account.

So it went on; he'd write books that would never get published, but he typed them out because otherwise, the nagging sensation that he had to do it would bug him forever and ever. And ever. Then the day came that he had another vision that Sam and Dean find out about a series of books written about them and they hunt down the writer of the novels and…

What? That's a little presumptuous, isn't it? Writing a book about two guys who find out that books are being written about them and _then_ having them go meet the author…? Was that a knock on the door?

And there they were. Sam and Dean. Not LARPers, not a couple of crazy dudes with lots of guns. The Winchester brothers. Proof: they knew the actual last names of the brothers. Holy shit.

Holy freaking shit. Holy—wait, did that mean that he was _controlling_ the lives of these two guys? That sucked. He had put them through so much, and had actually _killed_ both of them just because he had thought they were fictional characters. Chuck felt so bad. He felt kind of awesome too, though. Of all the kids at his high school, he would have been the last choice for "Most Likely to be God."

Then an angel showed up and said that he—Chuck, not the angel—was a prophet of the Lord. And that made everything suck even more. He was a Chosen One, hand-picked by God to write down the chronicles of Sam and Dean into the Gospel of Winchester. A bunch of bad horror-fantasy novels is actually part of the holy scripture? No way, right? Yes, way, actually.

So much "yes, way" that Chuck even got threatened out of not warning the brothers from running straight into danger because that was their "destiny." Being special sucks. What's the point of having superpowers if you can't use them for good?

Anyway, he kept typing, writing out what he saw, Sam's final betrayal with Ruby, Dean getting stuck in the angels' Green Room, Sam getting tricked into killing Lilith to raise Lucifer, and—

Hold it, hold it. Chuck's last night on earth was _not _going to be spent at the computer. No, he was going to die happy, he was going to die having sex, sex with twenty girls. At once. And screw the cost and the—

The flutter of wings behind him made him whirl around. Cas and Dean. Cas and Dean, who were supposed to be _in the Green Room_, not here, in Chuck's house. Turned out they wanted to change their destinies. Whatever happened from then on was unwritten, unscripted. That sounded a whole lot better than having Lucifer running around on earth, so Chuck told them where Sam and Ruby were.

What was the worst that could happen, right?

Uh, yeah, having an angel explode in your kitchen is not an experience that Chuck would recommend.

So Dean didn't make it in time to stop Sam from killing Lilith and breaking the last seal. Lucifer rose, someone miraculously whisked them onto a plane and put Castiel back together again.

And Chuck had another bottle of Jack and started typing.


	19. Chapter 3 Last Night on Earth

**Three bottles of beer on the wall**

Summary: Ellen's thoughts during "Abandon All Hope."

AN: This one _kind of_ sucks. Sort of.

* * *

**Last Night on Earth**

"I love you, baby."

That was the last thought that crossed Ellen's mind before she pressed down on that doorbell serving as a trigger for the homemade propane-and-rock-salt bomb.

Had she lived a moment longer, her next thought would have been, "You'd better be there to meet us when we get up there, Bill Harvelle, or so help me God, I will kick your ass."

As it was, however, she didn't get the chance to think it. The gas caught fire and the entire hardware store exploded in a great ball of orange flames. She and Jo, as well as the entire pack of hellhounds, were blasted to heaven and hell, respectively.

The thought before her very last thought was, "Wish I'd taken one more shot of that whiskey while I still had the chance." Irrational, sure, but imminent death will do strange things to your mind.

And in case you were wondering, her life did not flash before her eyes. It was Jo, little baby Joanna's life that she saw.

Finding out she was pregnant, holding the tiny squalling thing in her arms for the first time, teaching her to talk, her first steps, braiding her hair, sending her off to school, their fights that always started over the smallest things, her baby all grown up…

"I love you, baby."

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

When Ellen was a little girl, back when she didn't know about things like demons and monsters and _hunting_, her parents had tried to raise her to be a good Christian. They took her to church on Sundays, dressed in frilly pink dresses and her hair curled with a bow in it, as pretty as you please.

Those weekly trips to church did much to shape Ellen's character as an adult. In fact, Ellen thinks that it was those dratted dresses that did the trick and put her off religion for life.

Rebellious? Joanna Beth had no idea what her momma was like as a kid, thank goodness. It was the age of protests, hippies, and all that jazz that Ellen came to age in, and boy, was it fun. Parties, orgies, fighting with her parents…she had "rebellious" down to a tee.

Then her ex-boyfriend got possessed by a demon, and this good-looking number with a Lone Ranger approach came and rescued her. Yeah, that's right; he had the galls to _rescue_ her, like she was some kind of damsel in distress. Ellen Pratchett was no damsel, that's for sure, and any distress she was in, she could get out of _by herself_.

'Course, Bill Harvelle just snorted and told her she was only alive because of him. Damn him, and shove off, right?

Well, he was hot. That's the only reason for Ellen's actions. Only reason, and it was a terrible one. Hear that, Joanna? "He's hot" is a bad reason for sleeping with a guy.

So one thing led to another, and a couple of drinks later, they were in Ellen's two-rooms-and-a-leaky-bathroom apartment, trying to get their clothes off as fast as they could. Bill had some serious scars; Ellen liked that. She _really_ liked it.

Bill left town the next night, and so long, farewell.

Not so much.

Two months later, she was kneeling in front of the toilet, holding her hair back so she wouldn't get vomit on it. Between gags, she cursed Bill Harvelle and resolved to send him a scathing note via that PO box number he left for her just in case. As soon as she stopped throwing up, that is.

Bill came galloping back in his '69 Mustang when she was six months along, apologizing profusely for taking so long; he'd lost track of time and forgotten to check that particular mailbox for a couple of months.

Ellen cussed him out, screamed at him until her voice gave out, and when she was done, Bill proposed, and everything went on happily ever after.

She wished.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

They used the money her parents had left their only daughter to buy out the then-owner of the hunters' bar that Bill liked to frequent. Her folks would have turned in their graves had they known what their daughter and her new husband used their money for.

Baby Joanna Beth learned to walk amid heavy boots and worn jean-clad legs, tottering from table to table to be fawned over by even the most hardened of hunters. Much to her momma's horror, she learned to pick pockets at the tender age of four, play poker at six, and shoot a gun at nine years old.

From that time on, Jo (_not Joanna Beth, Mom. It's so _girly) wanted to be a hunter, like her dad.

Like her dead dad.

That John Winchester. Ellen wished she'd never laid eyes on the man. He'd been with Bill on his last hunt, and it had gone wrong, so wrong. John'd come in, apology and sorrow and fear in his face as he told her that Bill, her Bill, was in the back seat of that big black hearse of his.

She'd thrown a bottle of Jack at him and yelled at him to get out. He'd come back in anyway, carrying a wrapped _thing_ in his arms, as carefully as he could with an injured right leg.

He set Bill down, real gentle, and stood back, shifting his weight off of his leg nervously. "If there's anything I can do…"

"Get out."

"Ellen," he'd tried.

She threw him out alongside a few empty glass bottles that shattered as they hit the ground outside. She wanted Winchester to shatter and break too, just like those bottles. Just like her heart, her life.

Only thing that kept her together after that was Jo. Jo, with her tangled blond hair and that defiant look permanently set in her face. Jo, her baby.

For all that her daughter rebelled and fought against her, Ellen knew that she loved her mother as much as she was loved. And Ellen made sure that Jo knew how much she loved her. She just didn't want her baby to go the same way her father had.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Almost twenty years after Bill was killed, Jo got mauled by a hellhound trying to save Dean Winchester.

She lay there on that table in the abandoned hardware store, bleeding, a pressure bandage holding her guts in, dying. Her baby girl was dying, and there was nothing Ellen could do.

She'd tried. She'd tried sending Jo off to school, tried keeping her at home, tried keeping the Winchesters away from her, tried, but couldn't keep her from hunting. It was in her blood.

So she went with her. Bill had made sure that Ellen really could take care of herself and Jo should any evil come walking in through those barroom doors. Jo had become a good hunter in her time away from home, and Ellen was a fast learner. So together, they hunted whatever they could find. What with the shortage of good hunters in these bad times, they had to work hard, real hard.

They played it safe, though, Ellen not wanting to risk her daughter's life too much, and Jo not wanting to push her mom too much. After all, Ellen was only hunting for her sake.

They did fine, until they got tangled in the Winchesters' business again. The first time the Harvelles got together with a Winchester, Bill died. The second time, Jo almost did. The third, the Roadhouse burned down. Winchesters are not good news for Harvelles.

But Ellen wouldn't be Ellen and Jo wouldn't be Jo if they didn't face up to challenges for people they liked, and the Winchester boys were real likeable boys. Must be the "motherless" vibe or something messing with Ellen's maternal instincts, but she liked them, even though Dean Winchester did insist on trying to get into Jo's pants every damn time he saw her.

Jo was a smart girl, and Dean was scared shitless of Ellen, so nothing came of it, not even with Dean's "last night on earth" speech.

Speaking of last nights, meeting an angel was one thing, but drinking with one? Now _that_ was a whole new experience. For a second, Ellen wished her parents could see this, their daughter and granddaughter sitting at a table with a real-live angel, but the moment passed, as Castiel (the _angel_) threw back the shots one by one, five in total. Jo met her eyes, and the delighted grin that graced her face was one of the best things Ellen had seen in a long while.

Ellen was glad for every smile Jo experienced in her life, and wished every tear and every wound could be hers to bear. Especially this last one.

Oh, Jo.

The gnawing black hole at the bottom of her stomach told her that Jo was dying, even though she didn't want to believe it. And when her baby said she wanted to stay behind to let everyone else run to safety, her heart broke.

Oh, baby. Didn't she know that there is no Ellen without Jo, just like there is no Dean without Sam?

Dean understood; no parent should outlive their child. Dean'd practically raised his brother; he knew. John Winchester, for all his faults, had understood it. It was wrong for a mother to mourn her child.

Jo's last wish was to be treated like an adult. Well, she'd made her choice, and Ellen had made hers. Nothing in this world or the next could tear her away from her baby. Nothing.

"You can go straight back to hell, you ugly bitch!"


	20. Chapter 2 Filius Nullius Cervisia

**Two bottles of beer on the wall**

Summary: John takes Adam out for his first beer. References a couple of previous one-shots from this collection but can be read alone.

AN: Sorry about the delay posting this. It's hard writing one of these every day! *exhausted* I shoulda planned ahead. *starts writing last story*

Title from Latin for "Bastard Son Beer," translated literally. Latin because of the significance it has in John's job. Also because "Another First Beer" sounded lame and using Latin makes me sound smart.

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**Filius Nullius Cervisia**

John Winchester stops by a few days after Adam's sixteenth birthday.

"Let me take the boy out for a spin," he tells Mom before they go.

John's visits have always been sporadic—his _job_ takes him all over the country, and leaves him with little time (almost none) to stay with Adam and his mom. Not that Mom would let him stay anyway—there was a reason she didn't call him when she found out she was expecting his kid. For one, she hardly knew the guy, and a brief Florence Nightingale-inspired romance doesn't really count.

Ever since Adam first begged his absent father's phone number out of his mom and called the guy, to let him know he had a son out there, and maybe to try to get to know him, John's shown up maybe a handful of times: around his birthday every year, a Thanksgiving here, a Christmas there.

He took Adam out to a few baseball games.

"Guy stuff. Normal dad-and-son stuff," John'd say.

Those trips to the stadium were fun. That is, they would have been absolutely amazing if Adam was a baseball kind of guy. Which he isn't—football's more his game—but that was okay. Adam had never done this kind of "guy stuff" with anyone before, since his mom had always been too busy to date properly (that's kind of how Adam came to be, actually).

He sure doesn't tell the man that he doesn't really care much for baseball.

John bought him a little souvenir bat, and a hat with a matching shirt, all with the team's logo on them. They chomped on stadium hot dogs slathered with ketchup and mustard and extra onions (the last of which earned Adam a strange look—maybe John didn't want him stinking up the Impala on the ride home) and slurped on large sodas and shared a box of Cracker Jacks for dessert. It was idyllic, for a guy who's never had a dad and always wanted one.

Then inevitably, the day would end and John would drive off in that huge car of his, leaving behind a hole that got deeper every time because of his brief presence. It's like that every time: John would come over unexpectedly, spend the day or the afternoon with him (sometimes Mom was there too, so they could really play "happy families"), then look at his watch and say he had to leave.

John stops by a few days after Adam's sixteenth birthday to take him for a ride in the big black Chevy.

Mom lets them go, and says she expects them back before she has to leave for work that night.

They drive along the long stretch of road leading out of the city and Adam wonders where they're going today. Maybe another baseball game? John doesn't tell him when Adam asks, just says, "What, you've never gone out just for a drive before?" and asks him about school.

Adam tells him about his plans for college (pre-med, then on to medical school, become a doctor, then earn a lot of money so Mom doesn't have to work so hard anymore). John's smile is small and wistful, which prompts Adam to ask if he went to college.

John shakes his head. "No, I'm just a mechanic. You'll be the second Winchester to go though." Then he gets this funny look like he's just swallowed down his trachea instead of his esophagus.

"You okay?" Adam asks.

John nods. "Oh yeah, fine." Sure he is. Adam doesn't know him even kind of well, but he can tell that much.

They drive for a while in silence, Adam watching the scenery outside his window. "Who was the first?" He's curious; he doesn't know a whole lot about his dad's side of the family since John's always been pretty tight-lipped about his life.

John lets up on the gas a little in surprise. "Uh," he stammers, "a brother. I had a brother went to college. Smart kid."

Oh, that's something new. "So I have an uncle?"

A droplet of sweat drips down John's neck. "He's dead. War." He spits it out like he _really_ wants Adam to stop asking.

So he does.

Pretty soon after, John steers off the road and coasts to a stop. Adam gets kinda worried, 'cause, maybe it was something he said.

"Uh, John?"

"Get out." It's curt, an order.

Adam's really worried by this time, since they're in the middle of nowhere, and is he leaving him here? For real? How's he supposed to get back to Windom? Hitchhike? Or maybe Mom was right not to trust John _too_ much and he was actually a serial killer or something. Maybe he was planning on killing him _here._ Maybe—

"Come on, kiddo. Daylight's a-wastin'." John's already outside the car and walking around back to the trunk.

Adam scrambles out and shuts the door carefully. He watches his father with wary eyes as the older man takes…two bottles out of an ice chest in the trunk.

Beer? Ooohhh. Awesome. The first beer is supposed to be some kind of father-son custom in normal nuclear families, isn't it?

John holds an amber-glass bottle out to him. "You ever had one before?" he asks, somewhat hesitantly. His voice is gruff though, so you can only barely tell that he's nervous.

Adam reaches out and takes it. "Um, no." He frowns down at the bottle in his hand. "Mom doesn't know about this, does she?"

Dark eyebrows arch upwards. "You gonna tell 'er? You don't have to drink it if you—"

"Dude," Adam cuts him off. "You're giving me beer. That automatically makes you awesome."

A grin spreads across John's face, reminding Adam of photographs he's seen of himself. He chuckles, low and deep, rumbling in his chest. "That's great. That's great," he says, hoisting himself up on the hood of the Impala as nimbly as if he isn't an over-fifty-years-old guy. After a moment, Adam scrambles up next to him and swings his gangly legs off of the side of the car.

They toast each other and drink up. It takes Adam a couple of tries to actually get the lid off of the damn thing, much to his dad's amusement, but he finally gets a mouthful of the stuff.

It takes all of his self-control not to spit it back out. Ugh, people actually like this shit? Tastes like ass. He swallows it down anyway, to save face, and when he looks back up at his father's face, the guy's laughing at him.

Adam takes another swig out of spite, while trying to keep the smile from his lips. Now _this_ is fun. Then he takes another drink, and another, and pretty soon, the whole bottle's gone and the sun's starting to set.

John takes his empty bottle and chucks it with his into the back seat. "Come on, boy. We better get back to your mom or she'll knock the stuffing out of us."

Adam manages to make his wobbly-legged way to the passenger side and slides in, bumping his head against the roof on the way. "Owwww. I'm 'kay."

That earns another chuckle from his dad and they're off.

Oh, bad idea. _Bad. _

"Stop," Adam gags through his hand and gets the door open just as his lunch pours out onto the rolling asphalt under him.

"Jesus," John exclaims and maneuvers them onto the shoulder. "You alright, kid?" A warm hand settles on Adam's back and strokes soothing circles on it. "Okay, we'll just rest here awhile. Okay." The deep voice is gentle now, comforting. "Easy son, breathe through it."

Cold sweat beads Adam's face, drenching his back and chest. His hair's sticking to his face and the back of his neck. Okay, not so cool. Not cool. "'m okay." He garners enough strength and willpower to heave the door closed and leans limply against the cool window. "'kay."

"Good to go?"

Too tired from vomiting his guts out, Adam settles for, "Hmmm-mm?" to answer, hoping John gets the message.

"Okay then, let's go." The car shudders once and starts moving again. Adam knows John's trying to be as gentle as possible, but the car's old and it freaking shakes when it moves. He groans again and wraps his arms around his middle.

He's miserable. He's dying, he knows it.

Adam must have fallen asleep because he vaguely hears his dad saying, "Another lightweight. What am I gonna do with you, kid?" in a fond tone. When he wakes up, there's a warm weight on top of him and he's lying on the couch at home. Opening his eyes and sitting up makes the world spin, so he opts for lying back down and closing his peepers. Oh yeah, that's better. There's only that brass band playing in his head now, so if someone would kindly drop a water balloon on the trumpet players, that would be greatly appreciated.

Adam thinks he can hear Mom yelling at John in the kitchen for taking her son out and giving him _beer_, screaming at the man about corrupting her child, and how irresponsible he is for giving a _sixteen-year-old_ alcohol. She says something about how John will never be able to _buy_ her son's love by giving him things and taking him out once in a while like he does. It just doesn't work that way. Adam thinks he manages to mumble, "Lub ya alwaysh, Ma," but he can't be sure since he's pretty much _gone_ by that time.

He opens his eyes again in time to see John leave. His dad's got a faint smile on his lips as he looks down at him, as if he's something between satisfied and proud of what he did, but there's a sad look in his eyes too. It's weird; it doesn't look a bit like Mom's "my baby's growing up" look, but maybe a lot more like uncertainty. Maybe he's suddenly thinks that Mom's right, and that letting Adam have that beer so young was a bad idea. Not that sixteen is actually all that young to drink, 'cause, you know, most kids at school have spilled a little rum or vodka here and there.

That's the last Adam ever sees of John Winchester. He stops coming by after that.

It's only after Adam dies a few years later, at the hands and teeth of a couple of revengeful ghouls, and is raised from the dead and kidnapped by three guys and a freaking _angel_, that he finds out why John had been so eager to be Ward Cleaver two or three times a year. He had other kids, who he'd raised to be demon hunters. According to them, well Sam mainly, he was a terrible dad, but honestly, who cares a crap because Adam would have taken _anything_ to just have someone around.

That's what he says, but maybe he doesn't really mean it. John Winchester _did_ drag him into this whole big mess. On the other hand, John Winchester did donate the sperm that half of Adam comes from. Strong point in his favor there.

Something cold touches his hand and he jumps a little.

"Sorry man," and damn it, but Sam, Adam's _half-brother,_ looks so sincere that he's half-inclined to believe him. "Here's the beer you were going out for."

Adam takes the beer and pops the lid with an expert twist of his wrist. The round metal piece clatters onto the wooden table, like some kind of warped coin. Heads. "Alright," he says, slouching down and crossing one leg over the other, "I'll bite. What was _Dad_ like with you guys?"

And Adam finally gets that look in John Winchester's eyes that day he gave him his first beer.

Regret.

It still doesn't mean anything though. Adam takes another furtive glance at the bolted door. He needs to think of a way to escape this house and ditch these guys, then goddamn save the world so he can hurry up and be with his mom.

Because _she's_ his family.


	21. Chapter 1 Designated Driver

**One bottle of beer on the wall…**

…and that's the one I'm gonna drink today! Maybe. But I _can_ now, legally, so that's what counts.

Summary: Ben's not a teetotaler or a Lemonade Lucy. He just doesn't drink. Future!fic tag to "Swan Song." Outsider POV.

AN: This fic is mainly about Dean's drinking problem. It really started getting bad in Season 4. However, this story also covers its effect on Ben, seen through an outsider's eyes. Oh, and in this version, Sam doesn't come back. I know, he's supposed to in the new season (eep! Spoilers, sorry), but I like my story better this way.

Enjoy this last birthday installment, and thanks so much for sticking with me this far!

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**Designated Driver**

Ben's not a teetotaler or a Lemonade Lucy or a believer in temperance or any of that kind of shit. He wouldn't give a crap if the whole school wanted to get drunk and throw a toga party. He just doesn't drink.

It's not a huge problem; his friends know him well enough that it's not because he's a wimp or because he's afraid of his parents finding out that he's been drinking. Ben's beat up and laid out enough guys who've suggested that for people to simply accept that Ben Braeden doesn't drink so don't ask why or offer.

It's cool; a lot of kids don't drink at parties. Well, a lot of those kids _are_ losers and/or geeks, but Ben's very obviously not in either category. He's on the baseball team, on the honor roll, and has a reputation with the ladies. He's cool, an all-around great guy. He just doesn't drink.

But whatever, man. It's a free country.

Peer pressure's tough to fight. Ben's friends have seen his hand twitch towards a proffered plastic cup more than once, but suddenly get snatched back by some inner control. Ben doesn't do the whole share-and-care thing, but Russ remembers what happened a few years back, a short while after Ben first moved to their neighborhood. He's probably the only one of Ben's friends who knows.

Ben's dad, the guy who gave Ben that shining bitchtastic beaut of a car for his sixteenth birthday (built it up from scratch, according to Ben), is actually his stepdad. Russ remembers how the man first started being spotted around the block, kind of shabby and tired-looking, worn about the edges, and a drunk (or so Russ overheard his mom telling his dad). People started talking and he remembers his mom and other neighbors going over to talk to Lisa Braeden, Ben's mom, about the "problem."

Ben's mom is one tough lady, Russ'll tell you that. Mom came home in a fuming rage, talking about God and immorality and "that stupid _woman_, letting a man like _that_ near her son," and Russ's mom isn't a particularly religious person.

You can still see the big black car under the blue plastic tarp whenever the Braedens' garage door is open, next to Ben's mom's navy-blue minivan. Russ remembers when Ben's dad drove it right into a lamp pole once, soon after he came, he was so drunk. The car went into storage after that.

He drives a boring white truck now.

That streetlight's never worked right since that night. It flickers whenever the wind blows east.

Bottom line is, Ben's dad used to be drunk all the time. All the time. He was nice, a _genuinely_ nice guy, still is, but you could tell he wasn't quite all there whenever you bumped into him in the street, or whenever he waved hi to you while he was mowing the lawn (or trying to, at least—"butchering" was more like it). He smelled like what Russ imagines a whiskey distillery smells like.

The guy was seriously damaged. War, maybe, or lost a close friend. Russ never got nosy enough to ask.

Ben was Russ's best friend back then, and he still is to this day. Russ remembers how ecstatic Ben had been when Dean first came. It was "Dean this," "Dean that," and "Dean saved my life," and eventually, Russ got swept up in Dean worship too, without even meeting the man.

A few days after that, Ben started being not-so-enthusiastic about Dean, mumbling non-replies to queries about what the "awesome Dean" was doing, and could Russ _please_ go over to meet him?

The "mysterious drunk stranger" rumors started flying around the neighborhood the following week.

Ben began coming to school with dark circles under his eyes, yawning during classes, and generally being unresponsive to Russ's attempts to get him to tell him what was wrong. He got really quiet during that time in their lives, where before, he'd been funny and outgoing and _loud_.

He still played Hot Wheels and Legos with Russ, but it was half-hearted. Russ's mom fussed over him and fed him cookies and milk. Ben started coming over to hang out more and more. He slept over a lot, too. Sometimes his mom would even bring him over in the middle of the night and whisper to Russ's parents in the hall.

It got so bad that Mrs. Greaves, their teacher, drove over to talk to Ben's mom about his "home situation."

There was a huge load of emptied out glass bottles in the Braedens' trash that week. The hollow clinking and clanking inside the big plastic trash bags echoed throughout the whole neighborhood. Mrs. Braeden started driving Dean out somewhere every Thursday and the bags under Ben's eyes faded away. He didn't stop coming over to play but he didn't stop over at night as much as he used to either. Dean gradually stopped acting weird and calling all the neighborhood boys "Sammy." Gradually.

He totally earned the "Dean worship" of the neighborhood kids after that. He was the go-to guy for tips on how to beat up bullies, teaching them how to get two gumballs out of the machine with only one quarter, toddler matchmaking, lighting fireworks, playing catch, patching up scrapes and stopping tears…He did it all in a way that made each kid feel like a star. They all loved him. Some of the girls even had crushes on him, which he took good-naturedly.

Russ doesn't really remember at what point "Dean" became "Ben's stepdad," then "Ben's dad" after that. It's hard to tell, since he and Ms. Braeden never got married. They act like any other married couple he's seen though, so it's not hard to forget. Once, Russ overheard Dean call Ben's mom "Gumby Girl," and asked Ben what he meant by that. He got a very expressive grimace in lieu of a reply.

So really, they're just like any other couple, and probably the coolest parents in the neighborhood to top it all off.

Maybe that's why Ben's a good kid and doesn't get in trouble a whole lot. That's not to say there's not the occasional fist-fight, but it's always for a good cause, and Ben's _never_ alone in that. Russ always has his back. Always.

When they got old enough to start wanting to go to parties (thrown at _night,_ on school days), Ben never drank. Russ did at the first party they went to. He threw up straight away, and Ben had to call his dad to come pick them up. Russ doesn't remember much of the trip home, but he thinks he heard Ben say vehemently, "You know I wouldn't, Dad. I wouldn't."

Russ could almost swear he heard Dean say something in response. He thinks it sounded something like, "I know. I know. I'm sorry, Benny. So sorry you had to see that. You were a kid, you still are, and I had no right to come barging in on your life and ruining things—"

If Russ hadn't been asleep, he would have heard Ben sniffle (stupid, 'cause Ben never cries) and cut his dad off. "You're my dad. I got that out of it. And I wouldn't change a thing. For one thing, Mom likes having you around."

The soft laugh was quiet, so as not to wake the drunken passenger sprawled in the back seat. "Your Mom likes having me around? Well, thanks for putting up with me for her sake, brat."

"Ah, I guess I like you too." There's the unmistakable sound of flesh hitting flesh, albeit _very_ gently. "Owwww, child abuse!"

But of course, that never happened, because Russ was in a drunken stupor at the time and would never, ever dream of teasing Ben about practically telling his dad that he loves him and besides, Russ loves his own dad too, in a very manly way, so you know, that's not something you mess with.

Russ never asks why Ben doesn't drink, either. He doesn't have to; Ben knows that Russ knows why. He also knows that Russ will never tell another living soul to the day he dies. He's got Ben's back.

Russ isn't a saint. He gets drunk, once in a while. He knows he's got a ride home any time, though. Ben's always the designated driver for their group; he's got everyone's back.

The only rule is, you puke in The Car, you clean it up once you're sober.

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AN: Would you believe I wrote this _entire _chapter in under two hours? I'm getting fast at this.


End file.
